


Pain is Not The Only Path

by MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [29]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Mockingbird (Comic), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Chronic Pain, Exploring Sexuality, F/M, Illness, Pansexual Character, Polyamory, Swearing, lying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: This is going to sprawl a little. It’s going to be the story of how some of my favorite characters get into a polyamorous relationship.I might change the rating later,  but more likely I’ll have a separate related work with just some solid sex scenes.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Bobbi Barton, Clint Barton/Bobbi Morse, Hawkeye/Mockingbird, James “Bucky” Barnes & Bobbi Barton, James “Bucky” Barnes & Clint Barton, James “Bucky” Barnes & Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes/Natasha Romaoff, Winter Soldier/Black Widow
Series: The Mockingverse [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/462730
Comments: 43
Kudos: 30





	1. Disarming

"Were we getting pizza--ow, buddy, calm down there--tonight?" Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier asked Bobbi Barton, the Mockingbird. Since they were being chained to the opposite walls of a cramped, windowless underground cell by approximately twenty five incredibly heavily armed minions the question was a little incongruous. 

Still, Mockingbird answered cheerfully enough. "Nah, that's tomorrow. It's fridge night/serve yourself. Clint and I were going to get dim sum. Tigra wanted to try it, she can’t remember having any.”

"Huh," he nodded. "I could go for green onion pancake." 

"Me too!" she exclaimed. "And those shrimp and chive dumplings in the wonton wrappers, doused with hot sauce!" 

They smiled at each other, across a room of very confused bad guys. 

"Are you two insane? We're chaining you up to die!" snarled one of them, who had the most decoration on his fairly impractical uniform. Probably the leader. 

"Oh, yeah," Bucky said, then furrowed his brow a little. 

"Ooooo, that's his scared face," Bobbi said in a flat, bland tone. "It's hard to tell from his irritated face and his 'look a raccoon!' face. Totally different than his 'hey, nice dog' face though." 

"I thought it was my 'deep concern' face," Bucky said in a wounded voice. 

"You purse your lips more," she said. 

Something in the leader broke. Well, they had been tormenting him non-stop since he and his crew had captured them. It had been pure luck, to have a bus of lost tourists stumble across their ambush site. Rather than let the innocents get killed, the Avengers had surrendered. Then made this guy and his faceless minions suffer for it, verbally. Bucky was enjoying it. Bobbi had a wicked, nuanced wit that complimented his dry delivery quite well. 

Leader-dude was developing a nervous twitch whenever one of them spoke. 

Now though he just waved his minions out of the cell and gestured dramatically at the complex creation of tubes and wires and containers of brightly colored liquid on the floor. "In one hour, you imperialist clowns, this bomb goes off and the whole world will see two Avengers die screaming in a pool of burning acid!" 

"Clowns? Clowns are scary, shoulda gone with mimes," Bobbi mused. 

"And imperialist is just plain wrong, I mean at worst we were both independent contractors. It's like accusing your plumber of being a dictator," said Bucky. 

"The prices some of them charge, they could be," Bobbi said. 

The man stared at them, opening and closing his mouth a few times. Then he looked up, at the camera one of his minions had fixed to the ceiling and clearly decided to cut his losses. As he turned to the open door, Bucky called out: "Hey, could you leave us a couple of those colas I saw your tech drinking? I need the calories." 

The noise that followed was untranslatable but a vein started to throb on the man's forehead. The door slammed shut and the unmistakable noise/light of the metal door being welded shut started up. They looked at each other. 

"Forty five minutes," Bobbi said idly. 

"TIll?" 

"A very agitated Captain America kicks the door in." 

"How do you figure?" 

"They're live streaming us. Twenty minutes for Stark to trace it, on the absolute outside. Thirty minutes for a responsible pilot to fly here from New York. So, with Clint at the helm, twenty to twenty five. Forty five minutes and we're outta here." 

Bucky craned his head over and looked at the bomb. "And he said an hour before that goes off? Why?" 

"I think they wanted to broadcast us...I don't know? Crying in fear or something. And I think he was telling the truth the raging amateur." 

Bucky blinked at her. "What a mor-ooon." 

"I know, right?" 

"Just in case, whatta you got? No, hang on.” Bobbi arched up and grabbed the chains above her cuffs, pushed off the wall and kicked the big microphone attached to ancient camera into a few shards of metal and plastic.

“Why’d you do that? And not the whole camera?” Bucky asked. 

“If they lose the video feed they might come back; we annoyed that guy enough he’ll probably leave it for just losing the audio.”

He snorted in amused agreement. 

"Lock picks in the boots--dear lords of Asgard, I cannot believe they left us both in our uniforms--how about you?" 

"Once I get the electromagnet off my arm, concealed laser cutter." 

"Race you," Bobbi said in a companionable tone. 

They both began the subtle gyrations and acrobatics necessary to get at their escape tools. As they worked, they talked, now that they could. 

"How's the nightmares?" Bobbi asked as she grabbed at the chains holding her hands above her head, lifting up her feet till she could touch her mouth to the side of her left boot. Bent double, she began nipping at the leather "decoration" on one side, pulling it off. 

"I don't remember having one since...well, actually since that escape room thing Natasha put us through." Bucky was slowly flexing his shoulders against the extra layers of metal they'd used to secure him. Shockingly, amazingly, they hadn't secured the Avenger's feet to anything, just chained them together. He dug in his toes and strained his chest outwards. The bonds on his torso creaked. He relaxed and gathered himself to do it again. 

That sharp stab of pain in his shoulder made his jaw clench but he was getting used to those now, after the last few months. 

"Thass good," Bobbi mumbled, pulling away from her boots with a slim length of metal in her mouth. The more extensively emotionally damaged Avengers--the two of them and Banner mostly--had regular sessions with Sam for group therapy and Bucky had twice monthly appointments with a United Nations mandated psychiatrist--part of the 'reparations' package they'd worked out with the various groups and nations that still wanted a piece of his hide. Which meant Natasha, Steve and/or Bobbi had one too since they were still following the "never alone with an authority figure" protocols for the Winter Soldier. 

Bobbi twitched the length of metal around in her mouth, then let it tumble from her lips. She caught it between the heels of her boots. 

"Show off," grinned Bucky and heaved on his chains again. They creaked a little louder.

The pain slammed through him again, bad enough he knew he’d flinched. Thankfully she was concentrating on her lock pick and missed it. 

Bobbi raised her legs again, bending herself double, and fitted the end of the lock pick into the padlock at the top of her chains. "I really only keep these for nostalgia. No way in hell I should be able to do this."

"Well, from this angle it looks impressive," Bucky said dryly. 

Bobbi twitched her legs to one side like a wiper blade. "Are you referring to my flexibility or my ass?" Her voice was stern and her eyes narrowed. But she was grinning. 

For a long moment they stared at each other. Then a tiny little smile crept over Bucky's face. "I'm from the 30's. It's all about those ankles. Whoo, boy. I love a well turned out bottom quarter of a woman's leg."

Bobbi snorted. "And here I though getting turned into a super soldier destroyed the sense of humor."

"Hey, don't...Steve's plenty funny, you know," Bucky said, ducking his head uncomfortably. "He's just...he always had to be focused, serious--"

"Baaaarrrrrrrnnnnnes, come on. This is me here. I've been torturing Steve for a few years, I'm aware he's got a soul," Bobbi interrupted him. "You don't have to defend him all the time. He does just fine on his own." She lifted her legs back up and started manipulating the lockpick with her boot toes.

"I do though. I'm the only one..." Bucky trailed off, uncomfortable. He started up again after a second. "I mean I guess I was the only one. I mean, not even his parents ever...his dad was dead and his mom worked like a dog and no one ever looked out for him but me. It was my job, practically." He stumbled and stopped again.

Bobbi stopped what she was doing, bringing her legs down to rest on the floor a moment. "What was he like, back then? I've only ever known Steve Rogers 2.0, the luxury edition."

Bucky flickered a smile at her, grateful. "He was...he was skinny and weak and breakable as glass. He had a big mouth and when he wasn't using it to get into trouble he was coughing blood out of it. He sketched, with a stick in the mud when he couldn't afford paper, and he fought bullies. He got beaten up like it was _his_ job. I dragged his bony ass out of dumpsters and gutters and alleys so many times." He looked away, the chains on his chest popping ominously as his body remembered bad things. The pain surged again, but it was dim behind the memories. "But even then, covered in blood and mud, even then he just...shone. He was always the better man, even when he was a kid. Whenever I was around him he made me better. He made me--"

"Smarter, stronger, kinder. Brave, strong, powerful. More focused, more aware, more present. When he's talking, the solutions to problems seem so simple. The way through the darkness opens up and you just follow the light," she finished for him, as identical huge fond grins blossomed on their faces.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Yeah, that's right. You get it. So many people don't get it, not even after."

"James Buchanan Barnes, I've fought with him, beside him and because of him for longer than you got a chance to. I've walked the wilderness with him, nearly broken his perfect nose and been punched unconscious in return. We invented full-contact obstacle speed chess just to have another way to needle each other. He's heard my secrets, grieved for my pain and laughed at my jokes. He's stood guard over me and slept at my feet while I watched over him. He's saved my life, my sanity and my soul so many times we don't count it anymore." She leaned forward as far as she could, her blue-grey eyes piercing him to the core. "And until the day you came back to him, I always saw that he was incomplete. Just the tiniest smudge on the stained glass. Just that edge of loss and despair and failure. Until you came back to him, my brother's heart was broken and it half-killed me sometimes to see it. That's what I was trying to say during Nat's little practical joke. You're not his only 'best friend' anymore, sure. You're just the one person he's sure wanted to be around _Steve <_ and not Captain America."

She gave a firm nod and bent double, her feet tapping and twisting at the lockpick. "You made him whole again. The team never disliked you like you only thought because you're fucked up and dumb, we’re just all wary and paranoid--I'd god damn love you for that. Nat's orgasms and you shirtless in the gym are just a bonus."

"Women didn't used to talk like that," Bucky said faintly, then dug in his toes and strained at the chest bonds again. This time they pinged audibly on a higher register before he settled back again, panting slightly. It hurt way more than he’d been expecting, spikes of pure agony shooting up from the connection between his metal arm and his flesh. He’d felt the ghost of this before. It had been getting worse for months now. 

He’d never mentioned it to anyone. It wasn’t happening. He would ignore it, like he ignored any sensation that was in his way, hunger, cold, fear...love.

Outside his worried self-assessment Bobbi was still talking. "Women didn't used to get to vote, own property or be, you know, treated like people either so suck it up, buttercup," she muttered, hauling herself up a little further to eyeball the lock from underneath. 

Bucky twitched himself to a different angle and shoved against the chains again. And the pain burst against the back of his eyeballs with such force he basically blacked out, though he did distantly hear a huge _crack_. 

When he came to he saw with helpless horror the ten inch length of the chain had whipped through the air and slammed into the wall right where Bobbi's stomach would have been if she'd been standing.

When the massive metal on metal reverberation had died down, Bobbi rolled her head around and looked at the dent, then at him upside down. 

"Physics still applies to super soldiers," she remarked with great dignity, then undercut herself by adding: "You thundering dumb ass."

"Um, sorry?" he offered sheepishly, as he was squirming around to get a good angle on the electromagnetic patch disabling his bionic arm. The patch must be causing the malfunction in his arm, in his body. That was where the pain was coming from. He was sure.

Bobbi was still talking, "...You should be sorry, I dropped my lock pick. That's a forfeit for both of us." She paused. “You had a weird expression on your face right before, you know. I think that’s the only reason I realized something was wrong.”

Bucky stopped for a moment, then turned a little further, found the right angle and started applying judicious steady pressure to the edge of the electromagnetic band. He was impressing himself, that he could panic with such physical control of his face. He cast around for something, anything to distract her. "Bobbi, I wanted to tell you--been wanting to tell you for a while--what you said back in that chamber, during Nat's terrible idea of a bonding exercise?"

"Yeah?" she said, working her teeth into the side of her other boot, seemingly releasing her last thought. "Said a lot of stuff."

"About life expectancy thing. About you being the first to go?"

She stopped what she was doing and dropped her feet to the ground, looking at him gravely.

He plowed on ahead. "I really respected that. It was...pragmatic. Professional. Rational."

"Yeah, stands to reason it would resonate with you, emo boy." She rolled her eyes at him, but there was a spark of pride burning in them. She did the whole thing with the lockpick again and they spent the next few minutes working steadily. Bucky finally managed to dig his toes in enough and shift his hips enough (thanks to dance and pilates lessons from Natasha) to get a solid crush angle on the inhibitor on his arm. He began to press it down and in against the metal of the wall and just as he felt it sputter and die, his hand suddenly flexing again, Bobbi made a triumphant noise and the cuffs on her wrists clicked open.

He looked over at her as she set her feet back on the ground. “So, tie?”

*****

And thirty five minutes later, when a very agitated Captain America—with a very agitated Hawkeye and less obvious about it Natasha just behind him—did kick in the door to the container they didn’t find two bound, terrified captives.

They found Bobbi and Bucky sitting on the floor crossed legged arguing about the most efficient method to disarm the bomb. They’d already disarmed it, they were just arguing about how they could have done it faster.

“Oh for fu—“ Hawkeye started to yell, then turned and walked away from the door, cursing under his breath.

Bobbi looked over her shoulder at the other Avengers. “What? What we do?”

“They cut the visual feed thirty minutes ago,” Natasha said. “Things were a bit nerve racking on our end.” 

“Oh. Sorry, Milii Moy. We didn’t know,” Bucky said, rising smoothly to his feet and managed not to show in his body language when that massive stab of pain hammered up from his bionic arm into his shoulder and down his spine like his vertebrae had been turned into fire. 

He had a feeling it might have shown on his face and an even more worryingly feeling Bobbi had seen it. But she said nothing to him, rising to her feet as he did still half-turned around. 

“You made better time than we thought, Cap,” she said lightly holding out her hand towards the super soldier. He’d controlled his agitation fast, replacing it with relief. He handed her out of the cell with courtly grace. 

“Do we need Tony to clean this up?” He gestured at the remnants of the bomb, laid out neatly on the floor. 

Bobbi had hugged Natasha then gone after the still swearing Clint down the dark corridor. Bucky looked after her in mild irritation, then answered him. “Doubt it. It’s all off the shelf stuff. But we shouldn’t leave it here either, right?”

In the end they scooped the bits onto the concave side Steve’s shield and he carried it out to where the Quinjet was hastily parked in the main courtyard of the abandoned industrial complex where Bobbi and Bucky had been imprisoned. 

They found Bobbi and Clint in the shadow of the undercarriage, Bobbi with her back against the hull and Clint’s hands on either side of her face. They were kissing with something close to pornographic intensity.

Steve sighed when he saw them from the building’s door way. “Well, at least he’s stopped swearing.”


	2. Phantom Limb Syndrome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky can’t conceal his pain any longer — and learns he never should have tried.

Bucky was sitting in the Tower’s shared living room, reading a history book when it all started. Well, started as far as he knew.

He still had big gaps in his knowledge of the last seventy years and when he had time he was working his way through a bunch of basic history textbooks and pop culture essays. It was actually a lot of fun, making lists of movies and TV shows he needed to see. Lately a lot of movie nights had been he and Nat and the Bartons in someone’s living room, laughing and snacking and arguing. He had to admit he didn’t just find the Bartons amusing, he found them relaxing. Of course he sniped and groaned at them audibly — it just came naturally — but they were so easy to get on with. They exerted no pressure, expected nothing. They wanted nothing more than to laugh and make out and playfully disparage each other and their friends. Even his wary, paranoid nature was being won over to a kind of subtle affection. 

So when Bobbi appeared to stand silently in the double doors that faced onto the kitchen he wasn’t annoyed, just curious.

“You need me?” He asked, looking up from his StarkBook.

She cocked her head at him, pursed her lips and nodded. “Need you to answer a question, sure.” Before she continued she shifted her Starkphone out of her pocket and held it in her hand. ‘What’s going on with your bionic arm, Buck?”

Every warning sense in his body slammed into high gear. He snapped his StarkBook shut and rose to his feet, unconsciously seeking physical dominance over her. 

“There’s nothing—“

And before he could finish the sentence she held up her phone and played a blended recording of all the other Avengers saying at the same time “There’s nothing going on with my arm.”

When it ended they stared at each other for some considerable length of time, her tense, him furious. Finally, he snarled and made a “spin on” gesture with his right hand. 

She nodded. “You’ve been here, in the Tower, eighteen months. About fourteen months ago, biometrics from your arm started to show nerve spikes. Except they’d been there longer than that, that was just the moment you became physically aware of them. I looked back and isolated every recording we have of you in combat or training and matched them to the spikes. You show pupil dilation, heart rate changes and neurotransmitter anomalies consistent with electrical shock-like pain. Small at first, so small you might not even have noticed, but getting higher in intensity on a steady line increase.”

“I’ve always had them,” he snapped. “It’s normal.”

“It’s really not, Buck. Honestly, the only reason you’re not incapacitated is your healing factor is cleaning up the damage enough for you to keep going. But it’s a cascade — you never get back to 100% between attacks and every attack is chipping more off the upper end of your recovery. And now it’s so bad ... Bucky I saw your face in the container. Other than you almost killing me—which is just the job description—you were unable to function when it hit.”

“You’re one to talk,” he heard himself say, coldly. His voice was ... wintery. Winter-y in fact. “As if you have a leg to stand on when it comes to concealing disorders.” 

Everyone always forgot, the Winter Soldier was a killer but he was a spy too. When they’d needed it, he knew how to find someone’s weak point and twist. 

He saw the hurt in her eyes, for all that her face and body never moved. Under the satisfaction of knowing he’d scored a good hit, shame covered him.

“You’re not going to let us examine you, are you?” She said, an odd tone in her voice. Suddenly, there was someone different there. Not Mockingbird, whom he’d fought, not that one really raging sub-persona she called Barbara, who’d come out on a mission once when Clint was hurt and she couldn’t get to him. 

He had a feeling he was facing off with clinical, emotionless Doctor Morse now — drawn to the surface to cover her pain that he’d brought up her eating disorder as an attack.

“It’s none of your damn business,” he snapped.

“You made me do this,” was her only response.

And a big hand came down on his left shoulder from behind. 

“Siddown, Buck,” Steve growled in his ear, then shoved. For all that they were both super soldiers, Steve actually was stronger. He’d been so intent on Bobbi he hand’t even heard the other man’s silent, swift approach. Bucky’s knees went out and he folded back down into his seat, then twisted out of Steve’s grip.

“The hell, Steve! You’re just gonna to take her word—“

“Yeah, Buck, I’m gonna ‘take the word’ of my strat-tac analyst who _showed me all her evidence before we planned this_. What the hell were you thinking?”

“That I could fix it myself,” Bucky blurted out from under the glazed ice of the Winter Soldier’s view. 

“Shoulda just asked me, Buck,” Bobbi said in a tired voice, her own core persona slowly filling her face with personality again. “Coulda told you that doesn’t work.” 

He looked over his shoulder at an incandescently furious Steve, which he would have to admit terrified him. If Steve was showing anger openly it would be because he felt safe in private to express negative emotion but he always covered over a big part of it. Not just openly showing anger but _that much_ anger?

Bucky was in deep deep shit. 

He sighed. “What corner is Natasha hanging out behind?”

To his utter chagrin Nat AND Thor appeared in the corridor entrance behind Bobbi . Thor nodded to him, then looked over his head to Steve. Some unspoken message passed between them and the Asgardian raised a hand in salute, then wandered away. 

Bucky sagged back into his seat. “I wasn’t going to do...you wouldn’t have needed him,” he mumbled, feeling small and stupid and dirty. They’d actually thought he might attack Bobbi, or even Steve. That they’d need the back up muscle. 

“I told them we could not risk it, James. I’ve seen what you can do when you’re cornered,” Natasha said quietly, moving up to stand next to Bobbi. “Will you go with my sestra, James, and let her try to heal you?”

“You. You’re not coming?” He said, his voice very small and very Bucky.

“It wouldn’t do either of us any good for me to see you broken into parts,” she said in very swift Russian. He was certain Bobbi understood but thought perhaps Steve didn’t — his French and Italian had always been better than his Russian — and he loved her for that.

Slowly he rose to his feet and then did a fast turn to look at Steve.

Yeah. That was the facial expression he’d thought he’d be wearing, if he surprised him. 

Same expression he’d had when Bucky’s draft letter had arrived. 

Bucky sighed and nodded, shoulders slumping. “Okay. Med bay?”

“No,” Bobbi said briskly. “The cybernetics lab.”

*****

Stark was already down there, looking abstracted and very alive as he swiped through scans of the guts of the bionic arm. Bucky was suddenly struck with a stray memory of Howard Stark with the same look on his face as he built something complicated and amazing out of the guts of an abandoned tank and a rusty water pump behind a barn in Poland. 

“Have a little lie down, ice cube,” he called without looking up as Bucky, Steve and Bobbi came into the lab.

Bucky looked over at the place they wanted to scan him. It looked as far from the sharp edges and ominous threatening lines of the Winter Soldier chairs as possible; he sensed Nat’s hand in that. 

Instead it was little more than a long, low couch, ergonomically tilted, well padded but with an odd glittery sheen was probably sensor equipment. 

“Do I need to undress or something?” He said in a tired voice.

“Oh, yes please!” Piped up Bobbi.

“Nah,” Stark said at the same time, then looked up at her, grinning.

Steve made an irritated noise.

“It was worth a shot,” Bobbi said sheepishly. She turned to Bucky. “In all seriousness, we’re not going to be scanning or examining anything other than your bionic arm, shoulder and the nervous and limbic connections pertaining to the limb. Do you consent to that?”

“Aren’t you going to just do it no matter what I say?” Bucky snapped, getting annoyed at the charade.

“Oh, hell no,” Stark exclaimed, horrified. “You gotta consent, man.”

“Then what the hell am I doing here, if you’re not going to touch me without consent?” Bucky snapped, spinning to leave.

“You don’t have to get treated Buck, but you have to get treated to stay on the team,” Steve said to his back, with a calm, even finality he remembered from the war.

Just in front of him, Bobbi ran a hand through her hair. “If you want to live with the pain and eventual loss of function, that’s your business. As a civilian.”

Bucky felt the Winter ice creep up his spine again.

 _You don’t need them,_ it whispered in soft, sweet Russian. _You have me. I can take the pain if you can’t._

He could remember that now, times on longer missions that he had felt similar things and how easy it was to ignore, power through, when the Winter Soldier was the one in charge behind his eyes. 

Ah. That was why they had brought Thor. They weren’t wary of Bucky. They were wary of _him_. 

His arm making a faint protesting whine, Bucky spun and went to the couch to lie down. He closed his eyes, refusing to listen to the words in his head. 

*****

About an hour later, Bobbi and Tony stopped pacing and muttering and gesturing at each other. Steve had taken up one of his sketch pads — he had at least one scattered somewhere on any given private floor of the building — and was starting on his third study of Bucky lying on the couch. They both looked up, seeing accord on the two scientists faces.

Tony made a sweeping motion with his hand. “You do it, I can’t talk ‘old time’ to these guys about science. I’ll get started.”

Bobbi waved him out of the room then came over to perch on the table Steve was sitting next to, swinging her legs like a kid.

“So’s, this is how things lie,” she said, looking at and talking to Bucky. He sat up, swinging his legs over so that he was facing her. 

“Essentially, since you ran from D.C. no one’s been doing maintenance on your arm,” she said. “That was one of the reasons they kept freezing you, I think. The arm would start breaking down, they’d freeze you till they had a fix, repair you then bring you out again. Tony says he can see layers and layers of tech on the connections: stuff from Vanko’s lab, stuff from SHIELD/HYDRA, stuff he can’t ID but looks really old. There’s at least three distinct generations of pirated StarkTech in there, though the last update was pre-Iron Man. What he can’t figure out, and neither can I, is how they managed the initial graft in the first place. The hooked the bloody thing up to your parietal lobe! You’ve got full sensory feedback! Fine motor control! It should literally not have been possible at the time they had to do the initial surgery.”

“Fine, but what does that mean?” Steve asked, achingly serious.

“Tony won’t speculate but well, honestly they couldn’t have done it. ... honestly. That initial graft wasn’t science, or at least not wholly. I think they had help, one of the two M’s: magic or mutant.”

“I have a magic metal arm?” Bucky said in an incredulous voice. 

She waved him down. “No, no the arm is tech. Getting it attached was the hinky bit. And not even important. Weirdly, tech — StarkTech anyway, but I’d lay money on Wakandan tech too — actually can replicate this now. So, what we’d like to do is rebuild the graft from the inside out, without replacing the arm. Hang on, I got ahead of myself.”

She ducked over the bench they’d been working at and came back with a StarkPad. With the patented ‘Tony Swish And Flick’ she called a graphic off the Pad and into the air in front of them.

Bucky’s left shoulder and the upper part of his arm slowly rotated in mid-air, then dissolved into a wire frame version of itself. Bobbi reached out and highlighted the connection point of his flesh and the metal. Uncountable small red lines appeared, growing like vines in both directions, and after a moment were recognizably nerves. 

Over top another pattern of deep blue streaks and clumps propagated to cover the middle sections of the nerve endings, a little to either side of the meld. They began to pulse and expand, covering over the red lines.

“This is the problem. Deep, deep muscle adhesions — scar tissue down to a micro-cellular level. The regular updates on the tech seem to have—“she winced, unconsciously, as she spoke”—scraped them away from the nerve connections each time but wound up doing more damage in the process. Every update drove the scarring deeper and deeper. Your healing factor could deal with it while you were frozen — you still had metabolic action, just very slow — and it would hammer away at the adhesions to get you functional again. Once you weren’t going back under though, your brain became the primary energy sink for healing. Dealing with day to day damage meant that it couldn’t repair anything and you weren’t getting anything replaced. The adhesions are turning into slowly shrinking gates or rings, compressing and cutting off the nerve functions to your arm. At some point, you’ll lose all function and you’ll be in constant pain for a long time before hand.”

Bucky felt his face go hard and cold. “I guess I lose my arm a second time then.”

“What?” She looked at him, appalled. “No, no that’s not what I’m saying. We can fix it, and both Stark and I think permanently, though if you let him he’ll probably want to gift you hardware updates from time to time.”

Strangely, she pulled out her phone, sent a text message, then placed it back in her jean pocket . Then she shut down the simulation and leaned forward, hands on the desk top beside her hips. “Stark can make up a targeted nano-tech solution, tailored to your body chemistry and the exact internal structure of the arm. It will act as a kind of armor for your nerve endings, coating them in an extra dense myelin nerve sheath bound up with an organic version of my super kevlar. It might take a few applications to get it all — Tony says he can whip it up, test it and be ready to go in a few weeks at most.”

“What’s the ‘but first’ part I can hear in your voice?” Steve said dryly.

Bobbi rolled her eyes at him. “I’m getting to it, sport.” She turned back to Bucky. “But first,” she said in a pointed tone, “we have to break down the scar tissues that’s already present. Your healing factor will flush it away and then we can treat the nerves once they are free — if we treat it now, as it lies, you’re still going to have the nerve pinching and pain at the same level.”

Bucky clenched and unclenched his metal fist, imagining he could hear the nerve endings crying out in starved anguish as he did. 

“There is no way you don’t have a solution to this or you wouldn’t be talking about it,” he said slowly.

“Yup!” She trilled hopping off the table and coming over to him. Looking at him for permission she ran her fingers under the sleeve of his T-shirt and pushed it up over his shoulder, exposing the thick ropy muscle and dully gleaming metal underneath. 

Her small strong hands feathered across the connection, light and delicate as butterflies and he felt a thick tug in his stomach and lower. 

It was replaced with pain as her thumb and two fingers suddenly bore down into the muscle and metal, sending spikes of pain radiating out. Bucky yelped and pulled away, pushing her off him. She staggered back into Steve’s arms, actually smiling a little. 

“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was that sensitive. That’s the solution though, low tech to the max: massage. Deep tissue massage of the area. It’ll hurt like hell at first but in a couple weeks it should do what we need.”

“So,” Steve said slowly, “ is that where Tony went? To construct some sort of massaging machine?” 

“Nah, I can’t trust the bots for this. Too hard to direct. It’s going to have to be human hands, so that we can get real-time feedback and flexibility. But it can’t be me, or Bruce or Sam or Rhodey or Tony or Nat — hands aren’t strong enough to sustain the pressure. Can’t be you or Thor, Steve, you’re both too strong. Odds are you’d do crush damage to the cybernetic connections. So, like Goldilocks, we gotta hold out for just right, which should be walking in just about ... now.”

Clint Barton, barefoot, in a faded purple T-shirt and carelessly ripped jeans ambled around the doorframe, grinning when he took in the tableau.

“Secret weapon, reporting for duty, little bird.”


	3. Eau De Barton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when you remove social conditioning from the equation of attraction?
> 
> Or
> 
> Clint Barton smells really good, apparently

Bobbi and Clint started working on Bucky’s arm and shoulder like he was a difficult piece of marble: staring and pointing at first. When Clint had arrived Bobbi had proffered a small partial inhibitor, requesting Bucky attach it to his hand. “I’d prefer you didn’t reflex react to the pain we’re going to have to cause you and break my husband’s neck,” she’d said, laughing. Bucky’d taken it with a sigh but not reluctantly.

Quietly in the corner, forgotten, Steve Rogers flipped to a fresh page in his sketch book and began to draw. 

Bucky, sitting up, watched as Bobbi darted like a swallow from his side to the computer on the wall and back again, clutching a StarkPad. She and Clint put their heads and examined the image there, not speaking. Her fingers, blunt nailed, traced lines and curves — his hands, scarred and wiry followed behind. He nodded sharply, then looked up at Bucky.

“You okay if I touch you, man?”

Bucky nodded, swallowing slightly. It felt weird but ... nice, to know someone other than Milli Moy truly cared about his consent. 

At first, as Clint’s big hands rested lightly against the join of the metal and flesh of his shoulder he didn’t really feel anything. Then Clint moved from in front of him to the side and suddenly there was intense pressure on three points of his flesh, all on the top half of the ragged join. 

A moment later, pain blossomed and flared like fire — and then was gone, as the digging fingers moved across his skin like Clint was playing a piano. Where they went, pain followed like an echo, sharp and hard, making his breath pant in his chest. Clint seemed to know when it was getting too much and backed off, fingers barely touching as he and Bobbi communed at some deep level with just gestures and looks. 

She approached now, and they both laid hands on him, her touching directing his again. Slowly, there was less pain and more pulsing pressure, in precise, even waves. He knew damn well he wouldn’t be able to feel anything yet and still ... somehow his arm felt lighter, the connection smoother and swifter. 

None of them really knew how long it had been until Steve startled them all with a deep sigh of satisfaction. They all looked up to see him lay down his pencil with a decisive _click_ , looking very happy in his quiet way.

“Can we see?” Clint said, his voice bright but weirdly gentle.

The only thing Steve was really shy about was his art. There had been a silent collective agreement on the team from day one that no one ever pestered him to show anything. Asking once was fine; never more than that.

Steve smiled down at the drawing and then reversed the pad without hesitation.

Bobbi made a little mewling noise.

In fine lines and delicate shading, Steve had captured a moment of intense concentration, intent Bobbi directing an attentive Clint to some point on Bucky’s shoulder. She was looking down; he was looking at her. Bucky himself looked up at both of them them, his hair falling lightly over one side of his face. His expression contained both pain and hope. Bobbi radiated intelligence; Clint looked focussed and calm. 

Steve looked down at the picture again and spoke, now deeply preoccupied. “I need...I need to go paint this. I got fresh acrylics yesterday, I might even be able to get your hair color right, Bobbi. I—“ he looked up, squinting. “You’ll be okay, Buck?”

“I’m in good hands, punk,” Bucky said, his voice also gentle. 

Steve smiled gratefully and swept out of the room, abstracted and intent at the same time.

(The finished painting, titled “Healing Hands” wound up in the public art gallery/Avengers museum attached the Tower — from where it was stolen about a year later. But that is a tale for another time.)

Nothing really changed without him there, Bobbi and Clint still communicating with murmurs and touches, her hands first, his following. In time Bucky sensed a firmness of resolve, a pattern forming. The men broke for water and snacks at one point while she typed furiously on the main computer and when she was ready she brought a StarkPad over and placed it in Bucky’s hands. Then she and Clint moved to stand next to his arm. Slowly she pressed her thumbs to a specific spot on his shoulder , then moved them. Reaching over her shoulders, Clint placed his own thumbs in the same place, rolled them back and forth on the pads a few times, then nodded. Slowly they worked their way all the way around the join of his arm.

Bucky clutched the Pad she’d handed him and tried to sort through his emotions. 

Fear. He was terrified of losing control, losing function on his arm. Not because he felt less without it but because it would take him off the roster and he _needed_ to be on the team. Being on the team placed Bucky in the center of his head, leaving the Winter Soldier just a cloak he could pull on when he needed too. 

Relief. To have the pain explained, simply and clearly, lifted a weight off him that had been so heavy it had effected his very breathing. 

Shame. That he’d so misjudged his team mates, to think they couldn’t be trusted with his problems when they’d already demonstrably proved they would fight to protect him.

Comfort. That was a warm knot in his chest, a glow like a banked fire. The solace of being cared for was something nearly unknown to him; he had always been the one who cared, who cleaned up, who controlled, who watched over. 

He’d been Steve’s nurse and companion and protector before the war. During the war he’d been The Howling Commandos sniper, the one who saw everything and never missed a shot. As the Winter Soldier he’d been expected to perform like a machine, cold and methodical and never allowed to make a mistake. Freed from his bondage, no longer Bucky Barnes OR the Winter Solder alone he’d been a hunted, harried, mind-broken wretch. 

It was only being here, in the Tower, coming back to Milli Moy and Steve again, that had stopped what even he now had to admit was a freefall into permanent madness.

And these two strange, mercurial, lethal people had help weave the net that had caught him.

He liked them. Both. 

Maybe more than liked them.

That startling thought popped his eyes open, where despite the spikes of pain, the sheer comfort of _touch_ had lulled him into a peaceful slump. Bobbi had reconfigured the couch to support his back but keep his arm free. 

“You got those?” Bobbi asked in his ear, but directed at Clint.

“Yeah,” and the archer’s callused thumbs touched his shoulder in twelve spots, circling around from top to bottom. 

“Perfect. I gotta go run something past Stark and Banner’s with him now, so I’m going to loop Bruce in. He’s actually got me on current neurotransmitter research so I’m sure he’ll be happy to lecture. Start at one, move down by one each time and give each spot at least three minutes. Rest your hands every two. Buck,” she said, moving in front off him and tapping the Pad on. “See this chart? Those twelve points correspond to where Clint’s going to be massaging. Touch the slider next to each point and just move your finger left and right as you experience pain. Right is highest pain, left is least. Don’t worry about ‘accuracy’ we just want impressions. If it gets too bad, slide to the right and hold it then tell Clint to stop. With the sensor data it’ll help us chart the difference between the adhesions and your bonkers Super Soldier muscle fibres.” 

She bustled out of the room like a very polite tsunami. 

Clint snorted. “Marrying someone that much smarter than I am is sure...exhileratin’”.

“It ever bother you?” Bucky asked.

“Nah. But probably because she’d never made me feel stupid or anything. You okay if I get started?” 

“Go on.”

About half way through the second pressure point, Bucky closed his eyes, to concentrate on the sensations the touch was causing a little better. Each pulsing roll of Clint’s thumbs, heavy with callus but weirdly delicate sent waves of both pain and ... other things ... down his nerves into his spine. 

When he broke for his first rest, Clint made a humming noise in his throat then spoke very quietly and tentatively.

“You know, I really am dumb cause I should have changed out of this shirt before I came down. I know you guys have enhanced senses and all that and well...if I stink I’ll run and get a new one.”

Bucky opened his eyes, surprised. “No. I mean, I don’t—“ and without meaning to he took a deep breath through his nose. Now that he was paying full attention he had to admit there was a distinct scent emanating from Clint’s worn, soft, rumpled t shirt. 

He could smell musk, bow oil, a mixed spice, sweat and...

Bucky turned a sardonic side on the archer. 

“You and her both wear that, don’t you?”

Clint ducked his eyes, face reddening. “I’ve got a couple, sometimes she wears one to sleep. Sometimes she ... or I .. wears’em ... um ...”

“And you don’t wash them after?”

“She likes it when I don’t,” Clint muttered. “There’s a couple shirts of hers I feel the same about. When we gotta sleep alone we trade’em off as pillows.”

“You two are...what’s that phrase? — co dependant.”

“Hell, yes we are. At least we know it,” Clint declared, not sounding too upset about it.

Bucky laughed. “I’m okay with it. You’re not dirty or rank or anything. You don’t _stink_. You just smell like ... um .. Eau De Barton.”

“That’s good?”

“It’s not bad.”

Clint got back to his work, focussed and methodical. Bucky closed his eyes and tried to chart the pain like before but now that he was aware of it his lizard brain was merrily concentrating not on his distress but the swirling fragrance of the person touching him. Clint was obviously exerting himself and his skin was warmed and sweaty under the redolent aroma of the cotton he was wearing. 

With a low grumble in his head the Winter Soldier took over the charting, letting Bucky settled into a weird chaotic examination of exactly what it was about this that was confusing him. 

He’d been born in Indiana, before they moved to New York to be with his mom’s family so his dad could find work. He had helped out on farms and he remembered on of his older cousins saying a farmer should only keep animals that smelt good to him. When he’d been older and — frankly — a womanizer, he’d noticed the girls he dated more than once had been the ones that smelled the best to him. 

Steve smelt like a warm fire and clean clothes, safety and home. The other male Avengers smelled fine, sharp but like men who looked after themselves. Sharon smelt like an athlete, strong and clean as he liked, but she also smelled like Steve and so that was the end of that. 

Natasha smelled like virgin snow and roses and blood to him, pure and perfect and deadly. And now, here, he had to admit that both of the Bartons had separated themselves from the rest of the team when he thought about it.

Bobbi smelled like spice and metal and citrus, fierce and uncompromising. Exciting. 

Clint now. Clint smelled exotic, like dark chocolate and damp earth. Rich, smooth. 

Bucky’s hands reflexively shifted the StarkPad over to cover his lap and the physical evidence his rumination was leaving on him. Thank heavens Clint hadn’t noticed.

*****

Bobbi was gently massaging analgesic into Clint’s fingers, both of them carefully not watching Bucky as he slowly and carefully made his way out of the lab, walking a little awkwardly. 

Bobbi stepped out of the room and checked the corridor, then walked back in. “He’s on the elevator.”

Clint cocked his head. “You warned Nat?”

“Yeah, she said ‘Thank you very much!’.”

They grinned at each other. 

“He thought I didn’t notice he had an erection,” Clint said, shaking his head. 

“I could not believe you showed up in a fuck-shirt, Clint, you mighta given everything away,” Bobbi said in a mild scolding tone, but with a grin.

“I offered to change when I realized! Honestly forgot I was wearing it, hand to heart. He noticed though. Said it smelled like ‘Eau De Barton’.” 

They looked at each other in with satisfaction. Bobbi’s grin widened. 

“Step one, complete. Now we regroup, strategize with Nat and move on to step two.”


	4. Bedside Manner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad things happen to Clint, for once

Mockingbird was delicately disarming the bio-bomb, hanging upside down from a harness currently being held up by Iron Man when Hawkeye cut into the general feed to calmly state:

“I’ve been hit. Femoral. Sniper got behind us.” The words fell like an axe. Somewhere in the back of her head, Bobbi Barton started to scream, a thin keening wail like a lost soul. Femoral artery. Second fastest bleed out in the human body. Hawkeye’s tactical suit could hold compression on the wound, slowing the bleeding, but only for a little while.

As she carefully layer the bio-chemical blockers onto the trigger channels leading to the mechanism on the bomb that would wipe out two thirds of humanity in just under 90 seconds, Mockingbird was going to listen to her husband die.

Captain America’s voice snapped sharply through the com system like a breaking branch. “Black Widow, take point. I’m closest. Bucky, find that sniper and stop them.” 

In the huge open space around her, Falcon and the Hulk and Thor were battling off the foot soldiers of the fanatic group who’d built this mad scientist lair in the Andes, created the poison, longed for genocide. The casing was suspended in the middle of a huge cylinder, pierced on all sides, the freezing wind blowing through the building. At this height, with these jet streams, the pathogen released by the bomb would circle the globe in a matter of hours, wiping out anyone with a genetic signature that was considered “impure” by the cult.

The only way they could reach it to disarm it left Mockingbird suspended in mid-air, supported by Iron Man as their only flyer who could hover. 

As Bobbi screamed in hysterical panic inside her skull, Mockingbird methodically went about her business. They couldn’t actually disarm the bomb, only delay the trigger, using a precise and variable chemical signal that had to be modified on the fly. She was the only one with the expertise. She had to keep going. 

Captain America clicked back into the open channel. “I’ve got him. He’s unconscious, left femoral is severed. I’ve…I’m holding it closed right now. The sniper is pinging bullets off my shield. One just went through my calf, flesh wound. I can’t move or he’ll die. Mockingbird, tactical field control falls to you. Call it.”

“Hang on. Almost there,” she said quietly. The last reagent changed colour, signifying the slowing chemical trigger. “Iron Man drop me. Thor, go.”

Iron Man released the catch on the harness and Mockingbird flared her built in wing suit, gliding the forty feet to the floor. As she did, she called out orders to the team. Thor arrowed up past her, snatched the round container of death under one arm like it was made of paper and continued straight up, into space.

“Widow, point guard for Cap, keep them off him, Iron Man, aerial support till Thor gets back down here. Falcon, get to the quin jet, get the trauma medical kit to Cap. Bucky _find that fucking sniper and put them down_. Hulk, I’m going out the front doors. Level this place behind me.” She sounded cold and calm, as though reciting un-interesting information in a business meeting. 

But when she was amongst the minions lined up against her, Mockingbird’s fury shone clear.

Her batons snapped out, her face set and still under her tactical googles. She moved forward, the metal of her weapons blurring around her. The noise they made was a swift whistling sound, what Hawkeye called ‘the hummingbird made of razor blades’ noise. 

Heavily armed and armoured cultists went down before her as wheat under a scythe, bones smashing audibly. She punched the short end of her batons into one woman’s nose sending her reeling, her face a mask of blood. Mockingbird clicked them together to make her staff and vaulted the staggering wounded minion, landing in the middle of five others and swiping their legs out from under them.

With a massive roar, the Hulk slammed into the far wall of the concrete tower, hammering it with his huge fists as though beating a bass drum. Cracks propagated outwards from each blow and the ceiling started to crumble.

“Run,” Mockingbird yelled and at least half of the cultist turned and fled the room. She vaulted another row of fanatics and ran for the door herself. If they were too dumb or blindly indoctrinated to leave that was no longer her problem. Hulk roared again and the building started to come apart at the seams as he leapt back and forth across the cylinder, the whole structure shaking with each blow.

Mockingbird made it to the front door in seconds, leaving a trail of broken and bleeding enemies behind her. As she emerged into the blowing snow the Winter Solider spoke in everyone’s ears.

“Sniper’s down,” he said laconically, followed almost immediately followed by Falcon. 

“Med kit incoming, to Cap’s right.”

“Black Widow, Iron Man, Falcon, Bucky mop up once Hulk has the building down. Cap, I’m coming to you. Thor can you hear us?”

The Asgardian was silent, out of range and out of the atmosphere. 

Mockingbird’s HUD blazed a red dot onto Cap and Hawkeye’s position, in the rocks above the crater holding the base. 

“Iron Man, lift!” Mockingbird yelled and the red and gold armor swooped in, gauntlets grasping. 

For a few seconds, Mockingbird truly flew, her waist held tightly in Tony Stark’s metal grip. He released her to tumble and roll on the rocky ground, coming up next to the medical kit Falcon had dropped. To her left, Captain America crouched over Hawkeye, his shield still propped on hunched shoulders, protecting both their heads. His left leg was sluggishly leaking blood.

The building collapsed with a roar and massive cloud of dust, spitting out the Hulk as though launched from a slingshot. The rest of the Avengers would clean up the remaining cultists. Thor’s silence was a good thing, since it meant he’d succeeded in getting the bomb out of the atmosphere. It would dissipate harmlessly in the vacuum between Earth and the Moon. 

Mockingbird turned and looked left, at the ragged high ground behind her position, seeing the flash of the Winter Soldier’s metal arm in the searing sun light. He was prone, in firing position, picking off targets below with his rifle.

Tactial duties were done.

The world narrowed to two blond men and the red of their blood.

Mockingbird landed next to Captain America on the fly. His arms were pinned to Hawkeye’s leg, his fingers literally inside the massive wound on the archer’s thigh. Cap was gore to the elbows and more blood soaked the ground beneath his knees. 

“Cap, I’m here. Hands cramping yet?” Mockingbird said softly, the high pitched wails of Bobbi still echoing in her head. Behind Bobbi was coming rage-filled Barbara, stomping up from the deep black depths of her brain, snarling. Mockingbird turned on her. _Go away. You’re aren’t helping here._

Barbara settled back into the darkness but didn’t go far. 

“No. Soon though,” and the strain was obvious in his voice. “Losing fine motor control.”

“Just hold on. You’ve got my husband’s life in your hands. Literally.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Cap returned mildly. 

Mockingbird opened the medical kit and extracted two of the micro clamps. She moved next to Captain America and placed both of them on Hawkeye’s knee, small metal scissor like objects in sterile packaging. 

“What are you doing?” Cap asked her. 

“Need to clamp both of the severed ends of the artery. We can’t move him while you’re holding it, not even you could keep it together. But remember, I have XRay vision?”

She dialled her HUD down to the right level and leaned over the wound. She could smell Hawkeye’s blood, copper and salt. She gulped, wanting to throw up. 

The display blacked out, showing nothing more than a wire frame of the interior of the wound. Captain America’s thumb and index fingers held closed the severed ends of the big leg artery. That he’d held them so tightly shut so long while being shot and shot at was a testament to both his physical strength and his ‘Cap-ness’. He’d die before Hawkeye did.

Mockingbird offered praise to a God she didn’t believe in that she had small hands. She picked up one micro-clamp and freed it from its casing, then reached it into the wound on the outside of Cap’s left arm. Guided by the HUD, she set the clamp against the slippery tube of the artery and thumbed it shut. It clamped down and held without ripping. 

“Ease up on the left,” she muttered and Cap slowly released his grip. The micro clamp held. “Okay, clear there.”

He pulled his hand free, his fingers shaking uncontrollably. Mockingbird picked up the other clamp,and repeated the procedure on the lower chunk of the artery. Again, the clamp squeezed shut and held. 

Well, Bruce Banner designed them and Tony Stark built them. The best of the best. 

She and Cap sat back at the same moment, both of them letting out a huge sigh. 

Mockingbird touched her coms open. “Someone get us the damn quinjet. We have to get Hawkeye to a hospital, now.”

She looked over at Cap. “And Cap too, his leg’s still bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” he said then conspicuously failed to be able to stand up. His hands and arms were shaking with stress fatigue. 

“You saved him, Steve,” Bobbi said, just between the two of them. “You saved his life. Thank you.”

“Say that again when he wakes up, okay?” Steve muttered.

*****

Steve stuck his head around the doorway of the medical suite.

Bucky sprawled half-sitting up against the back of an old beaten up couch that had been moved into the room and lying across him like Tigra on a warm patch of the deck was Bobbi. Her head was down against his chest, she was drooling and she looked like a collapsed sack of laundry. 

A finger was laid against Bucky’s lips — Bobbi was lying against his metal arm — and when he was sure Steve was looking he mouthed _Just. Fell. Asleep_

Steve grinned, shook his head and continued into the room, which made Bucky purse his lips in that irritated way he had. Silently, Steve drifted over to the bed and laid his hand against Clint’s forehead. 

His skin was dry and warm, not fever hot, and he had a natural flush to his skin. He couldn’t interpret the readouts and scans, not really, but they were all color coded for quick info gathering. Everything but blood pressure was mid-green and that was a high-yellow so he thought Clint was doing well. He turned and caught Bucky looking down at the woman making a damp patch on his shirt.

The tender affection in his face made Steve’s heart ... not leap, but move. Shift sideways. Take a spin around his torso. 

He probably needed food. 

As he drifted out again Bucky threw him an approving glance and lifted an open StarkReader off his knee, obviously settling in for the long haul.

Up at the communal kitchen Steve just got the freezer open to see what had been restocked while they’d been away when he caught ... not a sound but a pressure wave. Air motion on the back of his neck. He stepped sideways, turned and caught Tigra’s outstretched prehensile tail about to wrap around his neck. 

“One day,” the bikini clad catwoman purred, her green eyes narrowing,”I willlllll catch you.”

“I hope so,” Steve said amicably. “Non-lethal failure is the best instructor.” He released her tail, which retracted to whip around behind her a moment, then slow to stillness. 

She threw her hands into the air in a remarkably Bobbi-like gesture. She and the stick fighter had a budding friendship very different from the sister-bond Bobbi had with Natasha. Lighter, faster — a rushing California mountain stream not the deep, slow, immutable currents of the North Sea. 

The mutate had settled into the Tower quite nicely. She was fastidious—as befitted a cat—neat, precise, bright, lively and trouble all at the same time. There was a fierce sensuality about her that she was at once both unaware of and used to her advantage—everyone played along with her attempts to ‘seduce’ people into favours. No one took it seriously, Clint and Bobbi and Thor and Tony positively revelled in it and she instinctively seemed to know when to back off and what buttons not to push. 

Steve didn’t let on that he, Bruce and Bobbi had been quietly examining the idea that it wasn’t simply her blazing intellect that let Tigra know when she was about to over step. That was a conversation he was not prepared to have on his own. 

He gestured at the still open freezer. “Did you want anything?”. Her metabolism needed nearly as much fuel as his, and if she’d been pushing her astonishing strength or speed levels she could match Thor for calories consumed.

“Is there more lasagna? Cliche, I know, but I love the stuff,” Tigra said with a laugh. 

Steve squinted at the labels. “Turkey or sausage?”

“Both.”

He handed her the trays and snagged two of his own: his favorite Chicken Satay Noodles and a huge slice of the the homiest, most Americana meatloaf immaginable, paired with mashed potatoes.

They heated up and plated their food in companionable silence, Tigra taking huge unselfconscious forkfuls and chewing with undisguised pleasure. 

“How is Clint?” Tigra asked when she had carefully wiped her mouth and face fur clean. 

“Looks good, lost a lot of blood but seems stable. Bobbi was asleep on Bucky’s chest when I went down there, I wonder if he needs rescue.”

Tigra trilled a laugh. “Steeeeevvvvveeeeen, that man does not need to be rescued from Bobbi of all people.”

“What do you mean?”

She narrowed her eyes at him and showed fang in a sly grin. “I’ll explain when you’re older but — well — if you can feel pheromones like I can you’d not be asking me that question.” 

Steve sighed and gave it up for a bad job. “Honestly, I just hope we don’t get anything urgent for a few days. The Barton’s are my ... keystones ... on so many missions when they’re out of sorts we take a bigger hit than you think.”

“Hmmmmmm,” she purred, looking away. Her body language, usually so open and wild, closed down, contracted. Her tail went very still. “Could ... do you think ... could I help out? Fill some holes for you? I’m no marksman, nor genius, nor tactician, but fast, strong and ferocious can make up for a lot of deficiencies.”

“Greer, there is nothing deficient about you,” Steve responded sharply. “But if you’re asking to join the team that’s not my decision. If you want to ... try out — yes, I’d love to see that and I think you’ll do fine — but everyone needs to agree and we need to see some more things from you. Assess how you think in a fight, what your weaknesses are. If you’re willing to try I’ll put it on the top of the next agenda.”

She eyed him. “Yessssss. Pleasssssseeeeessssssseeee.”

“Jarvis, make a note will you? Thank you?” Steve called to the AI, who briefly flashed the agenda for the weekly meeting into the air in front of them, with ‘Greer Grant Nelson (Tigra) application for provisional field team membership’ inserted at the top. 

“You do know you have a home here no matter what, right?” Steve said anxiously. “No one would ever put you out.”

A black shining claw flicked up, drew a bead of moisture from her cheek and flicked it away. “Yes. I know. It amazes me but ... I know.”

Steve smiled at her. “Ice cream?”

*****

Down in the medical suite, hours later, Bucky was trying to work out if he could shift out from under Bobbi to go to bathroom without waking her when she woke up on her own. 

“This is—” she said in a soft, small voice against his chest, “—so hard. How has Clint withstood this so many times? Gods, I made a huge mess of your shirt.” 

She levered her self off him, staring at the wet spot on his chest in dismay. 

“It’ll dry,” he responded. “What’d you mean with the rest of that?”

“Oh,” she said, waving vaguely at the room. “This sitting and waiting stuff. I’d so much rather be the one in pain than the one waiting. Struggling to survive is so much easier than...this.”

He cocked his head at her. “You know that sounds really messed up, right?”

She looked shamefaced. “Yeah. I’m a selfish bitch, I know.”

“As long as you see it,” he agreed. 

She threw him a sharp glance, then a tiny rueful smile. “Well, one of my rules is ‘don’t lie to me’ so I appreciate the brutal honesty.”

“I don’t think any of us really have time to tell soft lies to each other. I got so very tired of lies, even if I couldn’t remember them all.” He looked around. “I like being able to speak the truth to people and not be afraid.”

She smiled more broadly. “Yeah, me too. I feel like I lie professionally, right? And I hate mixing my personal and professional lives.”

They both laughed at that. Bobbi got up and checked Clint’s readings, looking pleased. He chose right then to open his eyes, so they both figured he’d been awake for a while.

“You having fun without me?” He asked in a petulant voice. He sounded tired and his voice was slurring a little from the painkiller and things in his system.

“Yup. You have been replaced,” Bobbi responded in a matter of fact tone. “I was just waiting for you to take a leg injury so you couldn’t chase me.”

“Curses,” Clint said in a sleepy voice. “Where will I get my blow jobs?”

She stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You get better and I will suck your brain out through your cock, sport.” He fell back asleep, smiling,

Behind her Bucky made a strangled noise. “Well, that’s one kind of bedside manner.”


	5. Viral Transmissions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out on a mission, Natasha gets very sick.

They were half way up the mountain, two hours from the hidden laboratory, when Natasha started to throw up.

It hit her fast, between one breath and the next, heaving, heaving, heaving till she choked, till she couldn't breathe through the bile and mucous in her mouth, till she was on her knees, weeping and retching up her guts, and then nothing was left and the whole world narrowed to every ragged gasp that drove a tiny sip of air into her lungs.

She heard two male voices, one deeper than the other with a little odd accent that sounded sometimes American, sometimes Russian. Both he and the other man sounded panicked and Natasha felt her own panic rising in response, she'd never felt like this, never  
not even as a child in the red cold of death...

Then a woman spoke, an alto like cream, like honey, soothing and calm and under the sound of that voice Natasha's cramps eased and she could breath a little more.

She felt a prick against her neck and her muscles loosened further and she could breath again.

"Barnes, carry her, Clint, use those Barton eyes and see if you can spot that abandoned ski resort again. Nat, just breathe okay?"

Natasha was snatched off the cold ground, cradled against a broad hard chest. The arm under her shoulders was even harder, and cold as the ground. It smelt of metal and oil. 

"What is it? Poison shouldn't effect her," said the man carrying her. Bucky. Winter Soldier. James. That was his true name.

"It's not poison...for certain values of poison," the woman said tightly. Bobbi. Mockingbird. Sestra. That was who she was.

"Got it," called the other man from far above, before a slide and a thump. "That'a way." Clint. Hawkeye. Lover. That was who he had been.

They moved off at speed, the woman close by her head, a strong hand cool on her hot skin. She and the man with the metal arm talked in tight oblique flashes, as the other man apparently forged ahead, finding them a path. 

"This because of whatever was going on in there that you two weren't telling us?"

"No, I think the alien space lasers finally got us, sport."

"Bobbi..."

"Bucky..."

"I hate you."

"No you don't."

The rest of the journey was in silence, except for shouted directions from the man--from Clint--up ahead and panting breath. She stopped feeling sick and settled for feeling detached, like a swirling ghost just barely looped into her skin by a sewing thread. If she denied the existence of her stomach, it wouldn't come back up on her.

She had been a ghost before, dancing lightly across breaking ice, pursued by death and cold and the red light that had sustained her for so long. Then the winter darkness that was not evil had blotted out the red and she in turn had pulled them both up into the twilight for at least a little while before night took them both, spitting her out into the nothingness of _alone, alone, alone_.

Then had come the sun, all messy golden brown hair and a laughing mouth, hands rough and silken by turn. A heart to break who had still then never let her abandon the light until the winter darkness that was not truly dark had found her again. The sun had brought her a singing birdie to comfort her as she waited, a thing she had not known she lacked till she had it. 

They were out of the trees, by the all pervading scent of pine washing off an away behind her meant anything, and approaching a building, dark wood and broken windows looming like blind eyes. The other man--if she squinted she could see through the haze of red and gold that had taken over her vision--was doing something to the door and then they were inside. The bird that was a woman stepped away and there was a ripping noise and then a fabric sound and she was being laid down on a silvery survival blanket on a hard surface. The three people gathered by her side, the woman's clever fingers touching and tapping and measuring mysterious things against her skin as she spoke.

"Yeah, so, right...that lab is doing illegal genetic research, right? And they do for profit work for among other lovely groups the governments of Latveria and Madripoor. Steve lent us out to the UN to go in and get proof, which I've got. But I'm guessing we picked up some other stuff too. Well, she did."

"Sooooo, little bird, we're all going to die?"

"I'm not." James said in a matter of fact voice. The metal man was Bucky...James. The bird was Bobbi and the sun was Clint. 

Oh, would that she remembered that. He would laugh himself sick, to know he was the sun in her eyes. 

"Is there a 'smug asshole' component to the Super Soldier serum or something?"

Bobbi made a quelling noise. "No, if it was going to hit you and I Clint, we'd already be dead. It's more complicated than that. She wasn't directly in the labs like I was but I had the hazmat on. We came through different areas though, and she went through shipping at one point and....well...I wonder if there was contamination?"

"Wouldn't that kill the...you know...staff?" Clint said, his voice worried.

Bobbi made another noise, this one frustrated, then moved away. Natasha could hear clinking and pouring and ripping. "No because...look, Nat's got a significantly higher level of radiation in her bone marrow than we do, courtesy of Mother Russia's devil may care nuclear program.At least one of the projects that lab was working on was a bacteria designed to consume radiation infected cells--"

"That seems oddly magnanimous of them," James interrupted. 

"They want to use it to kill the Hulk."

"Ah."

"In any case," she continued, "if she got infected with them, they're trying to eat her bones but it's the wrong kind of radiation. So they're dying and dumping toxins into her blood. Throwing up is the first stage. She'll start losing hair and connective tissue next."

"So we call--" snapped Clint

"Their drones will kill us before the rest of the team can get here," said Bucky slowly.

"And anyway ... there's nothing on the Quinjet that could help her; maybe only back at the Tower...and, well, back the way we came."

There was a long pause above her.

"So, we go back," Clint said firmly.

"Nah," Bobbi responded. "I go back. You two keep her alive in here. Alone I can move fast, I've got the camotech, I can get in, steal the right anti-bacterial and anti-rad drugs -- they were doing some freaky shit with LPA in there and now I know why. So, we make her comfortable, keep her hydrated, then you play house and I go do my combat biochemistry thing." 

"I hate this plan," Clint offered in a plaintive voice.

"I also hate this plan, because I have to stay here with him," James added.

"That's hurtful, Barnes." 

"That's settled then." Bobbi's voice grew brisk. "Bucky, go fill those containers with water, will you? They have a Starktech micro filter in the mouth and neck of _that_ square opening and another one in the spout, you can use any water source you find to fill them. Clint, if you can start a fire in the fireplace? And set up wooden chairs there, nothing with padding. It'll be rife with mouse urine and I don't need you catching hanta virus."

The men bustled off and Bobbi's hand touched Natasha's face. "Sister," she murmured in High Russian. "I will bring back that which heals you, I swear."

Natasha was so tired the act of opening her eyes was beyond her but she managed to turn her head a little into the other's woman's hand.

****

Bucky Barnes stared into the gathering darkness till he was sure he couldn't see Bobbi's back anymore. Then he sighed and went back into the cabin they'd broken into. It was in reasonably good shape, other than a few busted windows and the evidence of vermin everywhere. They'd fixed big leafy branches over the windows to black it out and moved a low wooden table and some chairs close to the fireplace. Natasha was huddled into a nest of survival blankets on the low table. Clint was standing over her, fussing with her IV bottle and line.

"I'm intimidated by the fact your wife carries that kind of stuff in the lining of her jacket," Bucky said to Clint. The blond archer grinned at him, his face in relief from the fire.

"She's got a thing about being unprepared, I think it's physically painful for her. Just glad she'd got the water purifying bags and the saline powder in there too." He jerked his chin towards the lining of Bobbi's trench coat, laid out on another table. It looked like a quilt of pockets against the interior of the soft cotton, containing any manner of useful things. Labels picked out medical supplies, survival gear and several caches of the Avengers special 'Cap, Bucky, Tigra and Thor need a lot of calories' ration bars , "Grab some grub buddy."

Barnes gnawed on chocolate and peanut butter bars at the same, which made him feel like he was eating fancy peanut butter cups. But he did feel better right away, especially after slugging down most of one of the five litre collapsible water bottles Bobbi'd kept rolled up flat as a playing card in her kit. Clint moved onto methodically laying out the extra IV bags (also compressed to nearly nothing till they needed them) and filling them with the purified water/saline solution his wife had whipped up before sprinting into the forest. Bucky eyed his work critically -- he acted as field medic for the Avengers a lot -- and nodded in satisfaction. He had to admit, the Bartons were two of the three people he'd trust with Natasha's life after himself. 

He ambled over to Nat, checking her temperature with his bionic arm, the sensors inside able to read it quite accurately enough from just a touch. 

"How'she?" slurred Clint from around a mouthful of his own ration bar--peppermint, his favorite same as Bobbi's-- leaning on the table and chewing loudly. 

"Hot," Bucky answered, even as he watched her shiver and shake like she had in Siberia, when they were both bone cold. 

"Knew that, seen her naked," Clint mumbled then shrugged, shamefaced when Bucky glared at him. "Sorry. It's reflex. Bobbi thinks it funny." 

"Steve's right, the two of you are the strangest married couple ever."

"I'm a lucky guy."

Bucky just stared at him long enough that his grin fell away and he started looking worried.

"Barnes, you feeling okay? If you're going to go all Terminator on us, maybe take it out into the woods and scare some owls?"

"I..."

"You?"

"I don't get you, Barton. Even now. After nearly 2 years on the team and being in space and all of this... have no idea how you can be...flippant _and_ effective. You talk like a damn clown and you fight like...like a super soldier."

Clint shrugged, his expressive features still for once. "Protective camouflage, Barnes." He picked up his bow and went to the doorway. "I'll do a run around the area and make sure we're alone."

When the blond man was gone, Bucky sat down next to Natasha, taking her hand in both of his.

"Five hours, my dear," he murmured in Russian, seeing her eyelids flutter. 

Five hours was the minimum for Bobbi to get back to the lab, break in, get what she needed and back to them. Realistically he knew it would be longer. But he trusted the Mockingbird not to dally.

Natasha crinkled her nose and Bucky took a deep breath. He smelled like...stale sweat and dirt and oil. There was a bucket of water next to the fire and a couple of cloths -- Barton must have cleaned his hands before doing the IV's -- and Bucky stripped to the waist, running the warm damp cloth over his skin, under his arm, across his chest. The ridge of scar tissue that circled his left shoulder ached a little in the cold. That was always the first thing he remembered when Hydra woke him up. HIs bionic arm would stay ice-cold for hours after he opened his eyes, burning him like a brand.

It hurt more than usual right now — how funny, he’d grown so used to the intense relief of the massages Clint was giving him that he could finally tell how much pain he’d lived with before. 

He was rinsing the cloth for one last pass when there was a low wolf whistle from the doorway.

"Man, that super soldier serum gives you guys muscle definition, don't it?" Barton said in that irritating cheerful voice of his. Bucky looked over his shoulder to see the archer slouch his way inside the cabin, checking Nat's IV and then taking a seat in the lowslung wooden chair by the fire. He brought the scent of pine and fresh cold air with him.

Despite his casual posture, Bucky noted he kept his bow arm free and his quiver hitched around where he could grab it easily.

"When I was a kid, whistling at another man like that would get you socked in the mouth, or worse," Barnes said sourly.

"And yet it was okay to do it to the ladies?" Barton said, his mouth twisted in that sly grin of his.

"Well...uh..." Bucky stopped and just stared for a moment, then shook his head. "It was different."

"I guess," Barton allowed, but skeptically. "Heck knows I'm a knuckle dragging clown but at least I respect women." HIs voice had a ring of self-righteous virture to it that made Bucky bristle.

"Now look here--"

"Got yah." Barton snickered, pointing a finger at him. "You're as easy to rile as Cap."

Bucky stared at him with narrowed eyes. "You are really annoying."

"Yup. Funny thing, I think Natasha is the only person who never said that to me in like the first day I knew them." Barton cocked his head, his face going serious. "She mighta said it in Russian though so...yeah."

"Bobbi said that to you?" Bucky asked, interested despite himself. The Barton's courtship--all day and a half of it--was something of a legend around the Tower, referenced only obliquely. No one had ever explained it to him; Natasha had just said 'They have to tell you themselves. It's too good a story for a third party to wreck.' He moved over to take the other seat, closer to the small smokeless fire they had made. Where he could watch the main doors to the outside.

"Heh, Bobbi tried to ditch me twice in the first six hours I knew her and ditched me successfully the third time a day later, right up until she had a run in with a psychopath and I had to rescue her. She also beat me up, twice, which I gather is how you two met," Barton said with a nose crinkling half-grin. He was a grown man, older (subjectively) than Bucky was, and still managed to look like a naughty kid most of the time.

"Has she never told you?" Bucky said, sitting forward in surprise.

"Nah, it didn't come up before Nat tried to beat her to death and after no one really cared anymore."

"Yeah, she...she cut my legs out from under me. Literally."

****

_Bucky stared at the blond woman carrying Steve's shield like she had some sort of right to it, like she wasn't profaning it just by touching it (that's not fair, Buck, she's my team mate Steve whispered disapprovingly in his ear) shut up you're dead Steve, you're dead falling in pieces out of the sky and this woman has the shield that got us through the war and I need it back. If I'm going to be you, I need it back._

_Bucky knew he was insane. He knew he was hearing things, seeing things, flashes of red hair and gold out of the corner of his eye, knew the trauma of seeing Steve die up there in the stratosphere when he been almost ready to show himself, almost, almost ready for days and days and weeks and he was never going to be ready, not really, never ready to show Steve his hands, dripping with blood, his bionic arm lubricated by death itself. Seeing Steve die, seeing him fall like he'd fallen and the only thing that mattered now were words he remembered Peggy Carter saying, days before he fell himself, before he died, he fell and he died like Steve fell and maybe ... maybe both of them weren’t dead?_

_"Captain America is more than flash and publicity now, Steven. He's a symbol of hope, justice, freedom. A symbol we didn't even know we needed till you."_

_If there was anything Bucky could do to wash his hands it would start by taking up that shield and becoming a symbol too. But he had to take it from her — did he know her? He thought he knew her name, Mockingbird, was that it — and he would, now._

_She turned to look back at the building she’d come out of and he darted out of the darkness of the alley, snatching at the shield where it hung off her back...._

_There was a metallic noise, a click and a sound that slide upwards in the air and he went down hard, skidding on his side, falling instinctively onto his metal arm and hand, striking sparks from the pavement as he slid._

_He rolled onto his knees facing her and now she had a weapon in her hand, long and shining, a metal staff. She’d used it to scythe his legs out from under him._

_He snarled, squinting, a street light between them, the feeble light_

_“Bucky Barnes,” she breathed. “Winter Soldier. I know you.”_

_“I don’t care,” he hissed._

_And charged at her again_

*****

“After that it got ... embarrassing,” Bucky concluded, looking down. 

“Well, she’s at her peak performance, violence wise, when she’s teetering on the edge of madness, so I’m not surprised,” Clint said casually, leaning back. “She laid out an actual battalion of AIM ground troops in Australia with her batons and a broken wrist when she thought Sam and Tony had been blown up few years back. It’s terrifying.” 

Bucky stared at him for so long in silence Clint eventually started looking around in concern. “What? Are you seeing ghosts or something?”

“You just called your wife a berserker, Clint.” 

“She calls herself that, buddy.”

“I don’t understand you people,” Bucky managed weakly, then flinched and flexed his metal arm without thinking about it.

“Hey, you feel safe enough here I can put down my weapons?” Clint asked him softly. 

“What? Yeah, sure, if you want to sleep or—“

“Nah, Buck, you need some pain management, I saw that spike in your whole face not just your jaw muscles popping or something all stoic and manly.” Despite the flippant words, Clint’s tone was quiet, almost coaxing. “But only if you feel safe enough.”

Bucky closed his eyes a moment, to conceal his confusion and sudden turmoil. Why did his consent matter so damn much and what had happened to him that he’d come to believe all he deserved was to be violated? He heard his own voice, low and soft above the sound of the fire, without consciously choosing to speak. “I’d welcome the relief right now.”

But Clint didn’t move. “Russian accent. Appreciate the consent, Winter, but I think Bucky’s still in charge?”

“He overthinks everything,” Bucky heard the Soldier say in his voice, then shook himself like a dog. “I do not and I would...I mean, I agree with ... him.”

“I love being in a room with more people than are actually in the room. Reminds me of listening to Bobbi argue with herself over social media posts,” Clint said cheerfully, standing up. He shoved his chair closer to Bucky’s and laid his bow across it, with his quiver propped up on the seat. It would add maybe a second to his response time to reach over and grab it.

Then he was at Bucky’s left shoulder, rolling up his sleeve. 

“Hang on,” Bucky said and shucked out of his tactical shirt, to give Clint better access. He could remember a time that might have ... bothered? Embarrassed? Him. It sure didn’t now. It was just skin.

But it wasn’t, was it? He knew that. And what did he _feel_ about that? Knowing that Clint was probably enjoying looking at him the way he knew damn well Nat and Bobbi and Sharon and Greer did?

He closed his eyes and just let his mind float free, knowing the Soldier would hold back enough to keep them safe. Since he’d started his therapy, living at the Tower, his relationship with the Solider was less fraught. They were wary as shelter dogs with each other but the overt hostility, the jockeying for control, had died down. Bucky had come to a strange sense of being watched over sometimes, as though the Soldier was caring for him in his own rough way. 

Same way that he felt being watched over by Steve or ...

He opened his eyes and looked over at Clint who was flexing his fingers a little. The archer met his gaze with those open blue eyes, guileless as a child. That was, of course, a total lie. He still wasn’t sure which of the Hawkeyes he’d seen in those eyes was the closest to the center. 

They stared at each other for a bit, then Bucky nodded. Clint laid his fingers against Bucky’s arm like he was about to start playing a piano. Then those thumbs pressed down and in and Bucky barked a sharp noise of pain. Clint kept bearing down, holding pressure on those spots, 11 and 3 in their parlance from the lab, because they’d figured out a day or two in that was where the largest adhesion clusters were. It took long enough Bucky’s breath was panting in his chest but suddenly he felt the pressure and massaging motion of the archer’s strong hands break through like a wave breaking over sand. 

And while it still hurt it was the throbbing pain of a healing wound. They repeated that sequence on three more points and by the time Clint had to rest his hands Bucky’s chest was shiny with sweat and he was fighting not to bite his lip. Clint turned and walked over to check on Natasha, swapping out her fluid IV and plumping the blankets under her head and neck.

“You feel like you need more there, Barnes?” He asked casually, craning his head over his shoulder as he stroked Natasha’s hair off her face without looking. 

Bucky stood up and ran his arm through a bunch of moves. It felt light and strong and none of the twinges of pain popped up. “No, I think that did it. I can’t wait till Stark has the repairs and upgrades on line.”

“I dunno,” Clint said softly, coming to sit down across from him again. “I’ll miss these sessions.”

“What?”

“I don’t get to use these—“he held up his fingers and wiggled them—“for a lot of tasks and at least a couple of those are about hurting people. I’m sorta enjoying...healing with them.”

Bucky made a choking noise. “To hear Bobbi talk you do a lot with them!”

Clint laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Sex and violence are pretty close to the same side of the coin, Barnes. Least with us.”

Bucky did his own checks on Natasha, then got his shirt back on and left for a quick run of the perimeter. Even from just outside the cabin it was hard to tell there was a fire burning so they’d done a good job camouflaging it. 

When he came back in there was an arrow pointed at him, which dropped across Clint’s lap when he whispered the right call sign. He leaned his head back on the chair and slouched bonelessly. 

Bucky joined him, watching his face closely once his eyes were closed. In stillness he was a plain man, even a little odd looking. That was a thing he and Bobbi shared, that their personalities invested their bodies with some strange spark of beauty. 

And when they were both practicing their craft — sticks and arrows — they were divine. 

“Bobbi and I are co-dependant,” Clint said suddenly, eyes closed, slump unchanged. “Dangerous levels. We figured that out on the Kree ship, right?”

Bucky flinched and looked away, remembering his nearly permanent psychotic break before his rescue by Tony, Sam and the Guardians. When he looked back, Clint’s eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. “We’ve been breathing the same air for so long, she and I, we can’t figure out who’s lungs are doing the work any more. It’s real weird, when you spend your whole life thinking all you want is someone who’ll stick around forever and then you find’em and realize ... happily ever after isn’t a _solution_ it’s a problem.” He looked at Bucky, his jaunty grin not reaching his eyes. “Or so Bobbi tells me, I don’t really understan—“

Bucky cut him off with a chopping motion. “Don’t. Don’t insult me with the stupid act. I’m not Steve I don’t think it’s amusing.”

Clint sat up, face settling into a grim, cold expression that matched his eyes. “All right. No act. Bobbi’s my life; I’m hers. Nothing either of us can do will change that. Don’t want to change it. But we’ve both come to see ... odds are good when one of us gets taken out, the other’ll follow. As things stand right now. Neither of us want that.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Bucky said, looking down at the dirty floor boards. 

“Because we need to stop being the center of each other’s whole damn lives. It’s clear to both of us as much as the team means, it’s not JUST enough. We gotta add something else, directly connected to us and us alone.”

Bucky’s head jerked up. “Are you pregnant?” He almost yelped. His chest clutched with horror, thinking about a pregnant Bobbi down in a bioweapons lab and he’d LET her go and Steve would FLAY HIM ALIVE when he found out.

Clint reacted like he’d been slapped. “Holy hell no! No way we’d bring a child into this—“ he waved his hands around, indicating the whole world. “Neither of us wants to be parents, never have. And even if ... we’d have to leave the team! That would make it all _worse_.”

Bucky leaned in an stared straight at him. “Then what ARE you talking about?”

“Unfortunately that’s gonna have to wait,” said a voice from thin air beside them.

Bucky lunged out of his chair and tackled the figure that formed there, suddenly finding himself face to face with Bobbi Barton as her camo tech disengaged. She rolled with his tackle and flipped him into a wall. While he was sliding down and righting himself he watched her stand up, wipe the blood off her upper lip and walk over to Natasha's prone, shivering form. 

Clint laid an arm over her shoulder as he stepped up next to her.

"That was really funny, little bird," he crooned at her. 

"I know, right?" she said happily, then they both looked over at Bucky, grinning like loons.

Bucky, from one knee, glared. “A: how did you get in and B: how long have you been in?”

She pointed upwards. “Made a hole in the eaves, way back in the shadows. Practice. Is there still boiled water around?" she asked. 

No one missed she didn’t answer the second question. 

Bucky stayed on the floor a moment, seething, and debated getting really angry at her, then let it go. Frankly, he had to admit it was pretty funny and maybe it was okay to be a jokester when you were as competent and lethal as these two strange, whimsical ... friends. He stood up, located the container of boiled water she'd asked them to set aside and brought it over. "Why not the purified stuff?" he asked as it handed it to her.

"The chemicals might fuck up the reactions. The goggle HUD is powerful but it can't do the really fine organic analysis I'd need. I found what I needed which included some extra intell on that LPA research I glanced at on the way out and whoooooaaaa boy when they break this cell someone better offer THAT research group immunity cause they have huge science balls." She was carefully measuring out three separate syringes of clear fluid as she spoke. "Basically, LPA usually works to combat cell death about an hour or two after rad exposure and those assholes have managed to tweak its effective window into weeks, months. And make it fast acting -- its sexy as fuck. So that'll prevent any more damage and the rest of the stuff I've got here is going to cushion her systems from biological blowback till she can recover. She'll be weak and easily tired for a few days."

But she wasn’t meeting either of their eyes and her voice was just a titch too bright, too manic. She was scared. Bucky looked at Clint and they shared silent agreement. The archer put his hand on her arm, pulling her to stillness and after a moment she did go quiet, sigh and step back until she could see them both. She nodded. 

"Bobbi -- you're just guessing about this aren't you?" Bucky said bluntly.

Bobbi glared at the middle distance. "Yeah, Buck I am. I am guessing--but I'm not blindly guessing. This is what I do, what I'm good at--condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. I have the read outs on these goggles, as powerful as the equipment in an ER in many ways. This is my field of research and interest and expertise. This is my mission. And this is my sister, my best friend. I'm guessing, for a certain value of guessing because that's how this works, that's how I keep the people I love alive. Could I guess wrong? Yes. Have I guessed wrong? Yes, but not in a long time, and never without a back up plan.'

Bucky turned away for a moment. "She...means a lot to me."

"She means a lot to all of us, Barnes," Clint said. 

“She is my _sestra_ Bucky,” Bobbi said.

Bucky rubbed the back of his neck with his metal hand, marvelling at the eased tension in his muscles from Clint’s hands. "I'm still working on this 'team' thing. It's been a while."

"I know," Bobbi said then handed him one of the syringes. "Pick an artery and get stabbing. Dibs on the carotid, since I guarantee i’m the only one here who’s done that shot to themselves.” 

Clint was already touching his needle to the inside of Nat's right elbow. Bucky took her other arm while Bobbi gently titled back her chin and injected the largest syringe into her throat. Then she set about mixing up something white and chalky into boiled water. She gestured at Bucky. "Lift her up to sitting please." 

He got behind Nat and cradled her against his chest. Bobbi stirred the cloudy water, then gently pried open Nat's lips and poured a little into her mouth, immediately holding her chin so she couldn't spit it out. She repeated it till about half the liquid was gone and Nat was struggling blindly to get away. 

"Sorry, sestra," she mumbled. "I know this tastes like the Hulk's armpit sweat."

Nat's eyes opened and she grimanced. "How exactly do you know that though?" Her voice was weak and transparent, like a ghost, but her eyes were clear. 

“I’ve been tucked under those arms a few times.”

“Same,” said Clint, making a ‘yuck’ face. 

“Am I going to die?” Nat asked in that tiny, pale voice. Just out of her line of sight, Bucky flinched.

“Eventually, probably,” Bobbi said with a gentle, teasing smile. She flipped her goggles back down from her forehead and her eyes moved rapidly behind the tinted lenses for a few moments. “But today you’re going to .... live.”

“Asshole,” Natasha whispered, then sagged back onto the table, exhausted and then asleep again.

“That’s the good news, wanna hear the bad?” Bobbi asked, looking from her to the two men.

“Bad news?” Clint said warily. 

“Yup. I was wrong about the delivery system. They were using a modified flu virus, tweaked to be hyper contagious. It just hit Natasha first cause of the rest of the stuff.”

“First?” Snapped Bucky. 

“Yup. We’re all infected and we’re all contagious,” she delivered the news in a matter of fact, cool tone. Walking over to her kit she pulled out three more syringes from a pocket, “These are anti-virals, from their own supply, and I speed read through the test logs — they’re safe.” She handed one each to the men. “Get injecting.”

“Why?” Bucky said, holding his disdainfully. “I can’t catch — “

“They made the damn thing to infect the Hulk, Bucky, I’m not risking your life on Hydra’s super soldier serum knockoff. In any case, it’s not really about that. We would all literally already be dead if it had spread in full live form to us. But as of right now we must assume we are asymptotic carriers; until our blood tests come up clear we have to quarantine. Together.”

Clint cut her a sharp look and she returned what could only be described as an “oh, fuck off” facial expression. He backed off, nodding, and emptied the syringe into his arm. Bobbi glared at Bucky till he did the same and then did so herself.

“So, what now? Are we stuck here?” Clint looked around. “I mean, we could do wonders with a couple area rugs, some curtains...an exterminator.”

Bobbi snorted a laugh. “No I have a better place. Private, defensible, easily sealed, nice deck, excellent kitchen...full laboratory.”

“Oh right! Great idea!” Clint crowed, then began gathering up all his stuff. Bobbi smiled and started doing the same on the table next to Natasha. After a moment they both turned and looked at the motionless Bucky, identical quizzical expressions on their faces.

“Wanna share?” He growled at them. “Where are we going? I take it not back to the Tower?”

“Nah, we can’t risk spreading this; as soon as we get back to the Quinjet I’ll go three rounds with Steve explaining it. Bruce’ll back me up, it’ll be okay,” Bobbi said, going back to tucking things away neatly in her jacket and pouches. 

Clint smiled at her fondly. “Better you than me, little bird.” He looked over at Bucky and took pity on him. “Did we ever mention that Bobbi won a lakeside property from Stark a few years back during a prank war?”

Bucky ran his right hand over his face. “No. Not so much.”

“You’ll love it. Lots of room, real private. And boats — I’m great at boats!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mockingverse notes: 
> 
> The lake house mentioned is the one we’ve seen before in “Cabin in the Woods”, their space adventure is “Revenge As Cold As Space“ and the Tony/Bobbi prank war has been mentioned a couple times.


	6. Domestic Bliss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The foursome fetch up at the cabin in the woods Bobbi and Clint own and just hang out
> 
> Featuring archery, knife fighting, cooking and why it’s bad to lie to your friends.

Clint set the quinjet, one of the smaller, stealthed ones they used for these missions, on top of a low building across a stone paved courtyard. There were wide stairs leading down off the roof of what was clearly a garage for the two story, rustic looking cabin Bucky could see. A paved driveway curved out of sight down a steep hill.

Other than the buildings and the roadway everything else he could see was an evergreen tree or a mountain. Once the arc reactor engine cycled down, a calm, nature-sound-studded peace descended around him. He puffed out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and felt his perpetually tense spine not relax so much as consider the concept of relaxing. 

Bobbi called from Natasha’s couch, “Grab anything and everything you think you’ll need, we’re going to have to set the interior to full decon once we’re out and it lasts two days.”

Clint was already methodically going through his post flight check list and piling small items on the co-pilot seat. Bucky started with the weapons locker. 

“We only need the personals,” Clint said over his shoulder. “The cabin’s...stocked up.”

Bucky pressed his lips together but nodded, willing to trust them. He got their personal weapon cases stowed and locked and had moved onto their lockers when Bobbi picked Natasha up from her couch. The IV’s were detached and Natasha had her arms around Bobbi’s neck. “Break those down for me, Buck?” She said, nodding at the bags and lines. “There’s a used equipment drawer in the bottom of the first aid locker, stow them in there and they’ll get washed and sterilized while decon is happening. Clint, I’m setting them up in the second floor lakeside suite, it’s got its own bathroom so she won’t have to go far when she’s moving.”

Eyes closed, slumped peacefully in Bobbi’s arms, Nat smiled. 

“Copy, little bird,” Clint said, his voice muffled by a bulkhead since he was standing up going through the pilot’s locker above the seat. “I’ll bring him up when we’re done.”

Bobbi smiled at Bucky and made her way briskly out of the quinjet and down the cement stairs, hefting the smaller woman easily. The two men cleaned out the jet and distributed the small pile of equipment and belongings between them. After triple checking the jet, and getting Bucky’s confirmation, Clint set a timed program going on the interior pseudo-AI system and they exited. Behind them the door locked and sealed, blast curtains came down over the cockpit and the retro reflectors hummed into life. The jet faded out of existence. 

Bucky wasn’t really sure what to expect from the interior of the building — it looked pretty but simple and homey from the outside — and he was sure not expecting to see that it extended two floors down and one up from the entrance way, had two full stories of windows that sprayed the setting sunlight across an open plan kitchen that gleamed spotlessly, a long dining table and a huge living room/lounging area with a massive TV and a big suite of furniture. Everything had that lean modern design that looked simple and cost a fortune. 

Outside the windows a multi tiered deck stepped down to a long floating pontoon walkway and a big wharf. The steepled roof of a boat house was just visible to the left, tucked behind an outcropping of rock. A lake of dark water stretched out past the wharf to a treed mountainside, and extended to each side until lost to view. 

“Hang on,” Bucky exclaimed. “I’ve seen this — Steve’s drawn it.” Now that he was looking he realized most of the hung art was either prints of Falcon’s aerial photography or paintings by Steve himself. 

“Yeah, Bobbi and I try to come up a couple times a year, and we bring the team when we can, and they all — we all — have full access any time, no questions. No need for a door key, it’ll read your ID card or your biometrics in a pinch. Just haven’t had a chance to bring you here yet, sorry,” Clint said, dumping his load on a sturdy table to one side of the atrium. “Bring your personals.”

Bucky followed him to a staircase that went up and down, set to the right of the door, branching off from a long corridor. With a closed door at the end that could be fully sealed, with a palm lock to one side. “That used to be the garage, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint said as he bounded up to the second floor. “Bobbi’s lab now.”

The second floor was a little more generic, obviously guest rooms. To the left of the staircase a door stood open to a studio apartment, essentially. A wide window overlooked the lake, with a small kitchenette on the near wall and the door to an equally huge bathroom on the other side. A king bed and walk in closet anchored the fourth wall, Natasha already propped into a nest of blankets and pillow, a carafe of ice water and a glass with a straw in her reach. 

“Where’s Bobbi?” Clint asked, stretching his arms up and smiling to see Natasha awake and aware. 

“Coming up!” Called Bobbi’s voice from the stairs and a moment later she hustled past them, carrying a tray with ominous medical equipment on it. “Good, good I can grab all the samples at once. Bruce is not a patient man over these things.”

She’d had a conference call with Steve and Bruce on the way to the cabin; Steve had been a combination of deeply concerned and irritated; Bruce had been deeply concerned and fascinated. They did confirm they’d received the drones with the lab data and advised the UN had already hit the facility — in full hazmat suits — and were cleaning it up. In the end, they’d agreed it would be a minimum of four days for a quarantine, more like six, and Bobbi promised to send fresh blood samples once a day. Looking out the window Bucky saw an armored Starkdrone hovering into view.

She drew her own blood first, then Nat’s, very gently. Clint was third. When she approached Bucky he shied, like a nervous horse. She nodded at him, gravely. “I know, I know. I get it too. Too many injections, too many experiments. Too much trauma. I swear, if I could exempt you I would. I’m sorry Buck. I can’t.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered and reluctantly extended his arm. A few minutes later four vials of blood were stashed in the drone’s refrigerator unit and winging towards New York. 

Bucky turned from watching the drone fly to see Bobbi sag into Clint’s arms. Chagrinned, he thought about how exhausted she must be. She’d slept a little in the jet but that was never comfortable or truly restful. She’d literally climbed a mountain twice yesterday, and done her “combat biochemistry” as she put it, AND tended to them all. 

Clint kissed her forehead gently and she smiled at him. Looking over at Bucky she grimaced. “We all need showers and food and sleep. The fridge has snacks and stuff, if you want anything else the pantry and kitchen downstairs will have it. The main bedroom is on the lowest level, far side of the deck. Keep your personals in here, obviously, but there is a full early warning system run by Jarvis on the house and land — and everything you see from the windows belongs to the estate.”

One long arm curled around Bobbi’s shoulder, Clint prodded her out of the room. “In the morning, I’ll give you the tour. You’ll like it here.”

The Bartons swayed out of the room together and Bucky heard them go down the stairs. He was looking at Natasha, who had leaned back and closed her eyes again, cuddled into a mess of pillows and sheets like an indolent cat. Bucky broke out their favorite weapons and tucked them into various places around the bed, in easy but concealed reach. 

“Milii Moy?” He murmured when he was done. “Do you need a hand to the bathroom?”

She did, and after they shared a quick, utterly functional, shower together, then he carried her back to the bed. She was still exhausted, barely speaking, but not throwing up or coughing anymore and her pale skin had lost that frightening yellowish pallor. She drank a little water and fell asleep. Bucky gulped down some protein shake from the fridge and joined her. The windows automatically blacked themselves out, the temperature lowered to a comfortable level and for the first time in what felt like forever Bucky Barnes felt safe enough to sleep.

And for once, without a single nightmare. 

*****

Bucky woke up to a soft sound of frustration. He opened his eyes and rolled over to see Natasha clutching the frame of the bathroom door, teeth gritted, holding herself upright by main force. He did not rise, or move much — she knew he was awake, of course — but simply watched her quietly. Slowly, shaky and weak, she dragged herself the few steps to the bed, hands on the wall the whole time. When she collapsed onto the blanket he rose and tucked her back under neath. 

“Hungry?”

“One of those protein shakes, berry?”

He fetched her the container, and helped her drink it and lay next to her till she fell asleep again. Then, his own hunger gnawing at him, he went to get dressed. His tac suit and underwear from the mission was balled up on the floor and reeked of sweat, dirt and pine needles. He gathered it up, and the Black Widow suit, venturing into the walk in closet to see if it had a hamper. He found, instead, a chute labelled ‘laundry’ and under that a hand written post-it reading ‘Yes, Buck, even the tac suits’. He dropped the bundles inside and wondered if anyone would panic if he just strolled around in a towel till it was all cleaned.

He suspected not.

However, there were clothes in the closet, some generic things of Natasha’s (right, the team visited, she probably left things here) and a few sets of Clint’s standard ‘sweatpants’n’tshirts’.

The pants were a little short on him but the even the short arms of the T-shirt were loose. The archer had biceps for days. 

The archer himself was in the kitchen when Bucky descended the stairs, eating brightly colored cereal at the kitchen table bar stools and reading off a Starkpad. He looked up and pointed down one level and across the open living room with the vaulted ceiling. 

“She’s still asleep,” he said, not whispering but well modulated. 

“Same.” Bucky advanced into the kitchen and opened the double freezer. As he expected two shelves were stacked with neatly labelled and dated containers of meals. Nothing was more than a year old and he knew from experience that it would still taste great — Bobbi and Stark had long worked out a combination of vacuum sealing and flash freezing that preserved flavor and nutrients. Right at the front were two trays of breakfast burritos, bacon and potato and spinach and turkey sausage. His favorites.

Also Clint’s favorites. Bucky craned his neck from the freezer to look at the other man. Without glancing up, Clint grunted. “Left’em for you, she’ll make me some tomorrow fresh if I ask. Just make some coffee, hey?”

While his food was heating, he did, refilling Clint’s mug first and his own. When he sat down Clint shoved another Starkpad at him and he signed in. They all had personal units, along with their phones, but these community ones usually sat scattered around in most rooms. He checked the news (nothing exploding) then read his email while he ate. When he was done, dishes in the washer, Clint swigged down the last of his coffee and gestured back at the stairs. 

“Come on, see the rest of the place.”

“You really own this?”

“Sorta. Bobbi has the deed but we can’t sell it or anything, not unless Stark strips the tech from the place first. If anything happens to the two of us it goes back to the Stark estate. It’s more a free lease for life.” As he spoke Clint was leading Bucky not up but down the stairs. They went past the next level, Clint gesturing at the closed door across saying ‘my workshop’ but not stopping. They went down not one but two more levels. 

Bucky felt the weight of stone around him, realizing these basements were hacked into the bedrock. The stairs ended in a corridor that ran side to side. Looking in either direction he saw a door at the end to the right but nothing but blank walls on the other side. Clint pointed left. 

“Behind those walls is an aquifer that Stark modified as the house water source. It’s fed from the same source as the lake and it’s filtered to hell and gone. We also collect rainwater in cisterns set back in the other side of the hill. Plus there’s a drainage system if the lake rises that also fills a bunch of OTHER cisterns then spills the rest of the water into some complicated network of...things? I think Bobbi muttered ‘capillary tubes’ once about it...anyway, it releases flood waters without washing out top soil or damaging tree roots. it ALSO works as a micro-hydro power station if anything happens to the buried arc reactors. None of it is accessible from the surface without blasting charges and heavy equipment; underwater access is gated and screened and alarmed and chained and alllll that.”

Bucky felt that deep sense of calm that came over him when he realized he was surrounded by people who punched up to his weight on paranoia and contingency. 

He turned and walked to the right, still talking. “We are totally off the grid here and like Bobbi said everything you can see — the whole lake, the mountains, all the trees — is own by Stark. This is the middle of a wildlife refugee now. So yeah, there are deer, moose, bears, coyotes, wolves even. We think might be a family of ex-domesticated cougars too, gone feral. We leave’em alone, they leave us alone.”

The door at the end of the corridor had another of the extra locking systems. Clint gestured at the palm lock. “Gotta make sure you’re fully in the system.”

Bucky placed his flesh hand against the lock and it scanned him, then the door hummed open.

“Welcome to the armory,” Clint said with a dramatic flourish. 

It was a mini version of the main armory at the Tower, with open lockers for each team member down the left side. Most were empty, but for spare tac suits. The far wall was a jigsaw of carefully racked and covered guns, all types. He spotted all his favorite rifles (that weren’t his custom one, obviously). One surprised him.

“Why the fuck do you have a A1?” It was a British built sniper rifle with an effective range of something like two and a half kilometers.

Clint grinned. “That’s Bobbi’s. We have sniper positions marked out and built platforms across the area — I’ll send you the map. With that she can hit targets on the deck from the other side of the lake.” 

Bucky laughed, shaking his head. “I just realized we have four of the top six snipers on the planet in this building. Of COURSE you have that rifle.” He examined the rest of the weapons, all gleamingly clean and well maintained. The right wall was stacked with ammo boxes, racks of Clint’s amazing extendable arrow packs, bundles of actual wooden arrows that Bucky would have bet money Bobbi and Clint made in house — explained why Clint needed a workshop — and two large, low, heavy duty lockers marked ‘explosives’ and ‘grenades’.

Then there were the hand weapons: knives of the style he knew Bobbi and Nat both favored, some esoteric ones they each individually liked, plus practice ones in plastic. Ones for the other Avengers, some really generic hunting knives. A few sets of swords; couple of machete. Some copies of Bobbi’s batons, in metal and wood and fire-hardened rattan. 

One quarter of the wall was archery equipment: bracers, shelves of bow strings, quivers, bows of various types and sizes and at the end...

Bucky stopped dead at the last piece. It was hanging off several rests at an angle on the wall, carefully preventing it from warping due to gravity. He gawped at it a moment, then looked at Clint, who was regarding it himself with a quiet, set expression. 

It was an English style unstrung longbow, clearly a single piece of wood, stained a deep almost black color that shimmered with iridescent purple highlights. It was as minimalist as it could be, the grip merely a suggestion, the arrow rests the same. It looked like the platonic ideal of a bow.

It was one of the most beautiful things Bucky had ever seen. It almost had an aura.

“You made that,” Bucky said. It was not a question.

“Yeah.”

“Why is it here?”

“And not at the Tower?” Clint responded. He paused for a moment, then shrugged, looking a little discomfited. “The Tower doesn’t ... isn’t the place for it. It’s not a combat bow. It’s not an Avenger’s weapon. I made it here. I shoot it here. Here is its home.”

Bucky nodded in total understanding. “How’d you get it that color?”

Clint perked up, glad to be off the metaphysics of the issue. “Bobbi’s got a Phd in chemistry, buddy. She made the stain by hand.”

Bucky regarded the bow a moment longer. “Do you think, someday, you could make me one?”

Clint made a startled sound. “I didn’t know you shot!”

A tiny, not quite happy, smile on his face, Bucky nodded. “It’s in here. I don’t know if I learned or they put it there by force but I know I can shoot a bow.”

“Huh. Okay. Next day or two I’ll put out the targets, we can shoot in a little, I can check your draw and get a ... feel ... for you. On a bow I mean.” Clint got a thoughtful look. “I knew setting that wood to season over the last couple of years was gonna be handy, in your face practicality.”

“I owe you one,” Bucky said.

Clint threw him a profoundly irritated look. “You gotta stop that man.”

“Stop what?” Bucky said, taken aback. 

“Stop with...owing and that.” Clint waved his right hand vaguely towards the door, indicating Bucky didn’t really know what. “You don’t owe me for making you a bow, I’m just surprised you’d want one. If I couldn’t make it I’d tell you. None of this stuff, this Avengers stuff, this...all of us stuff works if we’re worried about owing or fairness or any of that. We can’t worry about owing each other, if we did we’re all practically Tony’s indentured servants, the money he spends on us. I don’t do things for any of you cause I want debt between us. I do it cause ... cause we’re _family_ Buck. First real family I ever had. You don’t _owe_ family. You say please and thank you and you’re welcome and you mean’em and you ask for things nicely as you can but you don’t ... owe ...” Clint shook his head in frustration. “I can’t say it right.”

“You said it pretty good, sport,” said Bobbi appearing in the doorway. She was very clearly wearing Clint’s clothes, another T-shirt that was baggy on her and...

“Are you wearing his boxer briefs?” Bucky asked, startled. 

She sauntered into the room, smiling. “They are very comfy. And that little pass through in the front is convenient.” She and Clint wrapped arms around each other and looked at him expectantly. 

“What?” He said. “It’s a good point.”

“Steve would have told us off for sexual innuendo,” Bobbi remarked in confusion. 

“Still not Steve,” Bucky said in a tired voice.

They both laughed, ruefully, at his tone. Bobbi nuzzled Clint’s neck and it took Bucky a few words to decipher she’d started to speak again.

“...viral load in your blood is virtually non-existent. Dropped by 97% in the last twenty four hours. Clint and I have dropped too, but not as much. Natasha’s is lower but again, not as much. Still, Bruce is tolerably pleased.” She looked at Bucky. “You are theoretically safe, non-infectious; if anything happened you could leave.”

Clint shook his head. “I love scientists: virtually, theoretically. Can’t pin you down to anything, right?’

“They beat certainty out of you in biochem grad school or you switch disciplines.”

“I could leave but I shouldn’t, right?” Bucky said.

“We’d all prefer you didn’t.”

“Then why tell me?”

She turned the full force of those eyes on him, those blue-grey eyes like the ocean: wild, lethal, unpredictable and implacable. He was pierced by them and wondered what magic she performed to hide herself from the world as she so often did. “Because if something happens, and you have to make a choice, you can’t do it safely without all the information.”

Clint gave her hip a squeeze. She smiled up at him, radiating sweetness and light like a switch had flipped. 

The Bartons gave him headaches a lot but at least they were interesting. 

Still smiling at Clint, she continued. “Iron Legionnaire waiting outside on the deck; brought you some clothes, Buck, and me some fresh ingredients. But he needs to take back blood samples again, so shall we all troop up to Natasha’s room and get this over with?”

As they locked the armory and headed to the stairs something that had been bothering him from the first moment he’d looked down that hallway coalesced into focus. 

That T-junction made no sense. If it was just water behind the walls, why had Stark sunk ten meters of corridor into bedrock?

Bucky strode past the stair case and up to the ‘blank’ wall at the end of the corridor. Studying it sharply, he reached out and pressed his hand against a sport about half a meter from the ceiling. A small panel slide into view under his touch, a blank glass face. He turned and looked back at the Bartons. Clint was leaning on the wall, head down, grinning visibly. Bobbi had advanced with him down the corridor, her head cocked like a curious bird.

“Were you planning to tell me?”

“No,” she said with a smile, “because we knew you’d figure it out.”

“What happens?” He gestured at the panel. She reached past him and touched it. It power into life with five virtual sliders, unlabeled, and three buttons. 

“If you move one and three to seventy five percent, and four to fifty six the buttons activate. The first one is the barn door protocol, air tight shutters over the entire building surface, including across the stairs there. Second evacuates the oxygen from the building or turns it back on. Third ... sprays accelerant into the air and ignites it.”

He studied her intently. “Escape hatch?”

Clint barked a laugh. “Nice.”

She grinned over her shoulder at him, then stretched up on tipetoe and pressed on a small place right at the join of the walls. Her fingers passed through the rock—hologram Bucky realized—and then a hatch opened directly above him.

“Drops into the aquifer after a few feet. Stark aqua breathers stored right next to the drop; they’re rated for fifteen years and we check’em twice a year minimum. Forty minutes of oxygen. All the gates and barriers into the aquifer unlock from this side with a radio pulse from the equipment itself.”

“I love working with professionals,” Bucky muttered.

*****

In the guest bedroom, Bobbi finished the blood draw and passed the sample case out the window to the Legionnaire, then stepped back.

“Everyone wave!” She cried and they all complied. The human sized drone’s eyes flashed, taking a picture, then soared upwards and away. Bobbi sat down on the bed and touched Natasha’s forehead, then took her wrist in one hand. The two women smiled at each other as Bobbi’s fingers gently monitored her pulse.

“Sestra, what would you like for lunch? I have supplies to make almost anything now and it’s time we got you back on solid food,” the stick fighter said with a smile. 

Natasha cocked her head and pursed her lips. “Congee?”

“Shredded chicken with ginger okay?”

“Perfect.” 

“Excellent, I’ll have Bucky bring up a bow—“

“No,” Natasha said, firmly, closing her other hand over Bobbi’s fingers on her wrist. “I will come downstairs and we will eat together, as civilized people.”

Bobbi stared at her, then gently freed her hand. She pressed both palms against Natasha’s cheeks, then slid her fingers down her neck, pressing on the side of her throat. After a moment, she nodded sharply.

“Agreed. I’ll call up when it’s ready.”

Bobbi swept out of the room, fingers twitching and lips moving as she recited ingredients. Clint stretched and followed her, grinning. 

Bucky, now seated where Bobbi had been, looked after them, then turned ands spoke to Natasha in swift Russian.

_”They showed me the armory, and the fallback. I feel ... safe ... here, Milii Moy. They are thinkers, these two.”_

_“And best, from different sides. She a logician and he intuitive; very little slips past them when they are together.”_

She took his flesh hand in both of hers. _“They are very precious to me, James. I know you’ve sensed a plot of sorts, amongst us?”_

He nodded, studying her face carefully. 

She continued. _”They need us. Both of us — just myself alone was too unbalancing. Clinton cannot be a perfect friend to me and also her husband. He cannot carry both our hearts in his hands. But if he knew he could share that load with someone he trusted, it could work.”_ He opened his mouth to speak and she laid a finger against his lips. _”I only reveal this because I knew you’ve seen a shape forming and do so very poorly with surprises. I’m just going to say that you need to know before hand that I am full partner in this all, I deeply approve and I think it is wise and good for us. But I’m also not going to spoil the fun._ She grinned at him and switched to English. “Now kiss me. Lunch will be over an hour and that’s a good start on you worshipping me properly at least.”

Not even to solve her little mystery would Bucky have missed that opportunity. 

*****

The smells floating up from the kitchen drove Bucky downstairs after Natasha had fallen into a smug, satiated slumber. He found Bobbi alone in the big open plan kitchen, chopping furiously. He snagged a soft drink from the fridge and took a bar stool watching her with interest. A large stockpot steamed on the stove behind her, the scent of rich chicken stock and ginger rolling over him in waves. There was a small army of bowls on the marble in front of her, scattered chaotically. Each was filled with something vibrantly colored and deeply aromatic. He saw raw garlic, at least four kinds of peppers in perfect tiny cubes, slivers of ginger, two bowls of scallions, chopped onions, several kinds of vegetables. A few bowls of sauces, the deep reds and red-browns of hot sauces, soy, oils and vinegars. 

“What’s congee?” He asked her.

“A kind of rice stew.”

She must have caught his grimace from the corner of her eye because she stopped chopping and looked up at him. “It’s a Chinese dish, often served to invalids or for breakfast. Rice, cooked for a long time till it gets soft and silky, soupy and comforting. It’s a perfect base for flavors.” She waved her hand at the bowls. “You can make it taste exactly as you like. I like to add a big scoop of raw garlic to the bowl, then pour the base over top. It warms the garlic and releases the oils and aromatics. It’ll help her get her strength back; high nutrients and calories in an easily digested form. With the supplements I make for her, it’ll aid bone marrow reconstruction. Or I should say, speed it up. Even more than normal.”

The sentence took a moment to register and then he heard it fully. Bucky looked around. He couldn’t hear Clint in the building.

“He’s down at the boat house. We both thought we’d like to take the paddle boards out later,” Bobbi supplied, scraping a bunch of bright red chilis into a bowl. Then she stopped and looked at him, expectant. 

He nodded. “When did you figure it out? About her?”

She looked up at the ceiling, a calculating expression on her face. “About four months after I joined SHIELD.”

He started, genuinely shocked. She eyed him, a tiny quirk to her mouth.

“I’m really really fucking smart, Buck. I had access to the files. Two and two made seventeen with her — the timeline didn’t work. I looked further and there was only the one explanation and SHIELD had done a shit job covering it. Like they didn’t know what they had.”

“So the whole world knows now,” he muttered, dropping his head.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She turned to the fridge and pulled out a large bottle of sparkling water and an unlabeled bottle of pink syrup, then ducked down and reappeared with a pitcher. She began mixing them together. “Buck, I pulled everything about her out of the archives as soon as I figured out that even Fury didn’t actually realize what was going on. Pulled it out and replaced it with slightly shoddy covers which lead to better covers which lead to air tight ones. In nearly twenty years, no one’s ever looked further. She’s safe; her secret’s safe.”

He was staring at her now. “Why? You didn’t know her. Why?”

She stopped again and met his eyes, her expression soft and open. “Because I saw the shape of her past, and what she’d fought to become, Buck. Because I saw what it would mean if it came out and ... I didn’t need to love her to know she deserved some peace for once in her life. This is my real gift, you know. I see patterns and shapes and GET where they could lead and I couldn’t see the world knowing what the Red Room had done to her leading anywhere but horror.”

She finished mixing the punch, then turned to check the stockpot. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible.

But she heard him. 

“Does he know?”

“No idea,” she said without turning. “I never told him, he’s never mentioned it, I never asked her. If he does know, he doesn’t care, which is what I’d expect. But it’s not my secret to share. So I don’t. Honestly, I figure she must know someone at SHIELD covered for her but I’m not even sure if she knows it was me.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “And she doesn’t need to know.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Didn’t do it for you. Didn’t do it for her even. Did it ... to make the balance of the universe a little more just. I’ve been pretty well repaid.” Bobbi put the spoon onto a small dish with a satisfied air, then walked to a control panel on the wall near the fridge. She touched a button and he heard the sound of ‘open air’ on an intercom.

“Attention please. Would all archers and spiders please report to the kitchen area for lunch. I repeat, lunch time. Super Soldier already in attendance.” The words sang out from hidden speakers inside and outside the building. As she shut down the connection Bucky thought he could hear a creaky wooden door shut outside, and the bedroom door upstairs open. 

Moments later Clint bounded shirtless and sweaty into the bottom level of the house, across the floor into what was the master bedroom and back out again a moment later in fresh clothes and damp from the world’s fastest shower. 

By the time he was in the kitchen being fended off the food by his wife Natasha was half way down the stair case. None of the other three made the slightest motion towards helping her, even when she had to pause on the landing to breathe hard a moment, but both the men had placed themselves in spots where they had clear lines to rush the stairs if she fell. 

She didn’t, making her way slowly but steadily across the space to the marble countertop. Bobbi had a bowl and plate in her hands as the other woman approached. 

“What can I get you, toots?” She said in a brassy, exaggerated tone. 

Nat shook her head fondly, stepping up to the counter. Without speaking, she indicated the garlic, slivers of fresh ginger, finely diced asparagus and one of the bowls of chillis. 

Bobbi mixed some of each in the bowl, then turned and filled it with the aromatic rice and broth mixture from the stock pot, adding a generous mound of shredded chicken on top. Coming around the counter, she offered Natasha her elbow. 

“We can eat on the deck,” she said. Looking back at the men, she smiled. “Clint, don’t let him take all the garlic or peppers.” Then she lead Natasha down the last set of stairs and outside.

Clint lunged for the stack of deep, brightly patterned bowls on the counter. Humming happily he heaped his with ingredients, then rice and broth. “Help yourself buddy, but you heard the lady.” He ducked down the stairs himself, passing Bobbi on her way back up.

Bucky took one of the bowls and contemplated the array before him. Bobbi took the other side of the counter and they mixed their own portions in companionable silence. 

Out on the deck, Natasha was eating slowly and steadily, Clint with happy abandon. Bucky eyed his own bowl somewhat suspiciously before taking a spoonful. He felt his own eyebrow go up. The broth was rich, the chicken tender and the rice texture like silk. He wound up going back for seconds with Clint, and then thirds on his own.

The women stayed put, talking softly about small things, the clothing they had available, the scent of the products in the bathroom. Favorite knives. Interesting new international intell. 

Everyday stuff. 

Without being asked, Clint gathered up all the dirty dishes at the end, then put away the left overs. 

Bucky felt a sense of unreality creep up his spine. This happened to him on the reg; his body was so used to being abused it generally decided at random levels of peace and happiness he was in some sort of simulation. It was nearly once a day for the first few months he was at the Tower, freezing him in place or forcing him into desperate pointless motion. When it was really bad he had full blown panic attacks, dangerously lethal in a super solider assassin. It had been tapering off slowly but never gone away and Sam had told him it would take something big, some internal shift in his perception of reality for that to happen. That it might never come he’d accepted.

Right now, safe, well fed, surrounded by the bright sunlight and sharp shadows, the clink of ice in glasses, the scent of sweat from his companions Bucky Barnes felt the edges of his vision grey out, close in. His heartbeat sped up, and his metal hand clenched into a fist. The speech of the others sped up, became distorted and alien, and his breath went shallow and panting. 

Without seeing it, he knew two things: they all recognized the signs and they would all know not to touch him until it passed. He’d cracked Steve’s chest plate once, early on. He thought — Sam agreed with him — that it was BUCKY panicking and when it happened The Soldier took over, holding them tense and motionless so that he couldn’t do anything harmful. But Winter would also kick them into fight or flight mode at the slightest provocation in that state and the team learned fast to never give it to him.

Except that one time it had happened on a mission and he realized afterwards Natasha had pointed him at the enemy and flipped the ‘on’ switch. He didn’t regret what he’d done — the organization he’d obliterated had been complicit in every possible bad thing and they had been in a very tight spot — but the results had also been conspicuous.

Smoking rubble tended to draw attention. 

When he came back to himself with a soft mumble of aggrieved Russian fading in his mind the shadows had moved, the ice in the glasses had melted and all three of them were watching him carefully. 

“Clint and I would like to go out on the lake. Are _you_ —“Bobbi spoke in careful, precise tones and as much to Natasha as to him—“going to be okay?”

“Fine, yes,” he heard her say and nodded in mute agreement. The Bartons sighed, exchanged a look and then headed down a side staircase towards the peaked roof of the boat house just visible at the lake shore. A few minutes later they appeared on the water in bathing suits on a pair of standup paddle boards. Clint, Bucky saw, was wearing a waterproof backpack. They headed towards a floating pontoon platform moored about half way across the lake. It had a diving platform and a little sunshade area. 

Bucky watched them for a moment, then turned to Natasha. “They’re going to have sex out there, aren’t they?”

“Indisputably,” she replied. “I also know they won’t care in the slightest if we’re still out here watching the lake when they do. However, I admit I’m wretchedly tired and would like a nap.”

Taking stock of himself, Bucky felt the bone deep weariness caused by an extended attack. “That sounds great, actually.” Before she could protest he scooped her into his arms and carried her up to their shared bedroom.

As he fell asleep he forced himself not to give into the lingering fear that when he opened his eyes he’d be back in Siberia, in his frozen chamber, and all this had just been a new torture concocted by Hydra to break his spirit. 

*****

They woke up in the beginning of the long summer twilight to Bobbi’s voice intoning: “Dinner’s ready!” Over the intercom. Down in the kitchen, a steaming tray of lasagna, a bowl of salad and loaf of garlic bread awaited. Clint was already eating but Bobbi had nothing more than a protein shake in front of her. Natasha planted herself in front of the blond woman and glared. 

“I forgot I wanted to run the hill today! Seriously, Clint watched me make myself a full plate for later!” She gestured to a foil wrapped dish next to the stove while Clint made agreeable noises.

“Run the hill?”Bucky asked, piling about half the remaining pasta on his own plate to three approving glances. 

“Yeah, the private driveway is a good incline and it’s about ten miles there and back. I like to wind sprint it at least once when we’re here. The viral load in my blood is about the same level as yours now — I was wearing biohazard gear in that lab so yay — so I’m gonna run it. The trees will shadow it right now and I’ll be back before dark. If I leave in a twenty or so.” She finished the drink and took a long pull of water right after. 

Clint looked over at Bucky. “We should do some therapy on the arm later too, man.” The sidelong sly glances between the women were very poorly concealed.

Bucky took a forkful of food — aged cheddar and sausage and tomato sauce and spices — and thought that over while he was eating. He was glad the food was so good, so rich and different from what was in his memories and past — it kept him grounded in the moment.

He decided he should just play to his strength: head long forward attack. 

“Hey, so....you three have been plotting something for ... weeks now, right? Months? Wanna fill me in? Given it seems to be about me?” He continued eating, watching their faces. 

Clint blinked and grinned, ducking his head. Bobbi glared at Natasha. 

“You spilled!” 

“He’s extremely bad over surprises. He knows no details, sestra.” 

The blond tossed her hair, wildly irritated — too irritated. She was putting it on for show. 

“Jus’ tell’m little bird,” Clint mumbled around a drink of water. “It’s time to have it out.”

“Why me?”

“Cause I’m an uneducated orphan archer asshole and words are your thing,” he said, smiling. 

She poked him in the arm with a spare fork and then set it down with a firm tap. She turned to Bucky, waved her hands a moment, then stood up and paced a few feet back and forth along the edge of the counter. 

“You were halfway there in the cabin, more even. Ninety percent. Clint and I are ... too dependent on each other. We were talking with Nat about it before you showed up and that ... debacle with the Kree and my intense screw up over bringing you back into the fold and all ... that.” She waved her hands again, most of the smooth eloquence Bucky was used to seeing from her fallen away. He sensed this was Clint’s ‘little bird’ closest to the surface, another layer of the woman closer to the center of ‘her’. 

Bobbi paced a little more, then stopped and placed her hands on the counter close by his plate. She leaned down, looking intensely at him. “We can’t ... survive like this. One of us will go down, someday, somehow and the other will die of grief. We can’t be all and everything to each other any more.” She looked over at the archer, who was watching her with a sad, adoring expression on his face. Natasha was nodding at her, smiling. “But thing is ... we can’t ... we can’t put all of both of us on Nat’s back either. If nothing else it turns out the division of labor is unfair since I’m just horrifically bad at eating pussy.”

Bucky dropped his fork in surprise, which made Clint start to laugh, hard. 

Bobbi made an irritated face. “You’d think the skills translated from blow jobs but ... apparently not.”

“Your heart wasn’t in it, sestra. I wasn’t neglected but part of the point of all this is no one has to do anything against their nature. And it’s not all about sex, after all.” Nat reached over and intertwined her fingers with Clint’s. “You said it yourself. Love is not sex; sex is not love. We can go on as we are, forever, just loving each other. But I do desire that we at least ... try this. As a ... team.” She looked over at Bucky. “Speaking plainly, James, we would like to see if the four of us could make a domestic partnership of sorts.”

“S’os if something happens, we’re not suicidally alone, right?” Clint added. “Like, Bobbi’s my little bird, now an’forever, that doesn’t change, but it also never stopped Nat being my Spider either. And them being close as sisters. So if you’re willing...come join us.”

Bucky gently pushed his plate away a little. “Exactly how,” he said carefully, “would this be any different then the way we are right now?”

“Oh, for starters, we should fuck.” Bobbi said brightly. “You and I, I mean.”

The world went out of focus a moment.

From a long way away, Bucky heard Clint’s voice say “Never _seen_ someone’s brain record scratch like that before.” 

Closer, Bobbi continued. “You don’t need to give an answer now, Buck. And whatever answer you do give it matters that it’s what you want, and not what you think you want any of us to hear. Also, these things need to be all about honesty and like that’s a long weird convo among all of us with paperwork at the end of it. You sit with it as long as you need. If the answer in the end is ‘no’ then that’s the end of it and nothing changes. Almost nothing’s going to change anyway.” She drank the rest of her water and patted Clint and Nat’s joined hands. “I am now abandoning this post like a rat and going for my run.” And then she was gone.

After a long, long motionless silence, Bucky picked up his fork and finished eating. Clint and Nat watched him with the wariness of wildlife researchers monitoring a lion pride.

“You gonna ... freak out ... dude?” Clint asked him eventually. 

“I think I already am. This conversation is not helping my disassociation issues,” Bucky snapped, fiercely. “The gym is one level down, right?”

“Yeah, facing the lake. Doors open onto the deck there.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Of course, James. Don’t damage yourself.”

****

The gym had been fitted with the high end, heavy duty, magnetic weight sets that Stark had invented for Thor and Steve ... and now himself ... to use. Given the weight limits set, Bobbi had probably been using the squat rack last, and Clint the bench press. He touched the control pad on both, plus the deadlift bar and a set of the dumbbells. They all reconfigured to his last weight limits which he ruthlessly increased to just below the level where Jarvis would intervene. He wanted this to be something he had to concentrate on. 

Or more, he wanted it to be something that forced his body to ‘go away’, his automatic reactions taking over, leaving his mind floating free. After stretching and warm up, he began.

As Bucky worked his muscles to their limits, his thoughts gradually settled into something approaching order. As shocked as he had been by the proposal the trio had offered him, as amusing was the knowledge that they had tried and failed to make a viable threesome, he came to realize his strongest emotion was anger. 

He was livid that they would think manipulating him would work. He was livid that now, because of this, he had to wonder and question about all the little signs of affection and friendship he’d been so warmed by over the months he’d been with the team. 

He started his bench presses, his flesh arm straining to hold its own against the relentless power of the bionics and metal of his left side. 

Milii Moy — he expected that kind of thing from her, sometimes. Their relationship had grown from lies and paranoia and uncertainty. He could see through her webs and shadows, not always to the clear source but the knowledge that something was moving there.

But the Bartons? That galled him, being ... fooled ... as they expected everyone to be fooled, by that light, breezy, ‘ah shucks’ cornfed dumb American exterior they exuded.

Dumb American?

He knew where that epithet came from.

He looked into the mirror and his mind painted in the Soldier, all dark leather and menace, standing over him, his hands resting on the bar next to Bucky’s own, metal to flesh to metal to flesh.

“What do _you_ want?” He snapped, hating the petulance in his voice.

(All Winter Soldier dialogue translated from Russian)

_”I offer — perspective, brother._

The Russian word for ‘brother’ was spelled ‘brat’ when not in Cyrillic letters. Bucky was one hundred percent certain that was why the Soldier used it. Bucky held the bar stationary and the automatic locking system kicked in, keeping it safely in place above him.

“Yeah? Go on then.”

_”They did you wrong by lying to you. You have cause to be angered by that. They did you wrong by trying to manipulate you; that angers me as well. But when I think on it, I have no wonder why they did it. In fear and uncertainty, they fell back on what they all knew best as the path to success — lying.”_

Bucky began his exercise again, slowly, letting his muscle strain and ache and flood his body with endorphins and pain in equal measures. 

“That’s not an excuse,” he grunted, breath tight in his chest. When he looked straight up the Soldier was still there, a wavering phantom mimicking him from above. 

He was wearing the full face mask and goggles they would make him wear when he was being particularly intractable, to remind him he was their chained dog. Bucky heard his voice as a soft echo in his own ears.

_”I excuse nothing. I explain. And I remind you that it is also the path that we take. It is the path all who are damaged and healed as we have all been take: lie now, fix later. I lied much, over the years.”_

Bucky paused again. “I know. I remember every lie you ever told me, about what our missions were and what you were going to do and all of it. I remember the lies very well. Brother.”

Despite the face covering the Soldier registered shock and dismay, enough that Bucky’s concentration broke a little and his flesh arm wavered, nearly dropping the bar. The magnetics locked into place before it hit him in the face but he dropped his hands, panting and staring up at the Soldier.

Visibly agitated, the Soldier bore down on the bar like he was really standing there and it was holding him up upright.

 _”I do not speak of lying to you, puppy._ His voice had reverted to its usual cold, flat affect and somehow Bucky knew that meant he’d ... hurt the Soldier’s feelings?

The Soldier continued. _”Lies I told to the handlers, over and over, the same ones to new faces, for years and years and you did not even know, I think now._

Bucky looked up at him with a sneer of disgust. “How was I supposed to know? You always shoved me deeper and deeper into the black pit in the back of our head. You’d have cemented it over if you could, filled it with water, just to make me go away. I always knew that.”

A ghostly hand ripped off the wraith’s goggles.

 _”You ungrateful little..._

The rage was more frightening for the even, controlled tone of the voice. The Soldier paused and visibly stilled his agitated gestures.

Bucky knew, abstractly, that his was all his doing, all inside his head but he’d lived like this for so long it was what made sense to him. Internal dialogue, not monologue. So he simply watched the Soldier struggling with some intense emotion, about something he was thinking, and refused to let himself know what it was. 

_“I wasn’t ...”_ The Soldier seemed nonplussed now, confused as to how to continue, a very strange thing for them both to experience. _“I wasn’t trying to erase you; I was trying to protect you.”_ Truth shone from his eyes, light blue, haunted. 

Bucky sat up abruptly. He was alone in the mirror now, and he was staring into his own wild eyes. 

“You were, weren’t you?” The idea, not really new but newly allowed inside his head, as the splinters of his mind were slowly glued back together, seemed very true. The Soldier had come from inside him, after all, raggedly and painfully at first, as any birth might be. But eventually the smooth way he interposed himself between Bucky and the aggressive, almost successful attempts to rip Steve, Natasha, his own self away from him had to register. The Soldier wasn’t cruel, after all, simply merciless — there was a difference. He wouldn’t _stop_ once he was on a mission but neither would he deviate just to hurt or destroy. 

And he’d held himself between that part of them both that was still James Buchanan Barnes and the forces of darkness over and over, taking the pain, the punishment, the fear and loneliness ... because that was his gift. He was a wall. The immovable object. 

Bucky dropped his head and spoke to himself and the Solider and the self that was both of them at the same time. “Thank you. For being my shelter.”

The whispered response was above freezing, the warmest the Soldier could be. _”My duty. My purpose. I think you should try to forgive them their trespasses, brother. If you can. I like them all. They talk to me...without fear._  
As he started his cool down there was a knock on the door; he grunted assent.

Clint poked his head around the edge and nodded at him warily in the mirror. Depositing a bundle of fabric on a bench he pointed to a side door. “Gym shower is there, Nat sends clothes. When you’re done — if you still want — come on across the hall to my workshop. Pick your wood.”

Bucky took a bit longer than he would have showering and changing, making up his mind. Honestly, the workout had done the job and drained a lot of his hot anger. The Soldier had dissipated much of what was left into a cold determination to make sure they all knew damn well they didn’t ever get to pull something like this again, no matter what. 

And he — honestly — lusted after the kind of bow Clint Barton would make for him. 

He presented himself eventually at the workshop. The door was half open so he just went in. It was about the same size as the gym, without windows. Three walls were lined with shelves and cabinets; a carefully gridded hanging rack of hand tools took up the forth. 

Involuntarily his brain ran in through all the ways he could kill someone with those tools. The center of the room was a U shape of tables, the open side pointed inwards. Clint was sitting there, facing the door, but head down over an arrow he was fletching. A half full holding rack was next to him. Bucky realized it was resting on the floor and was about five feet high. Neatly stacked inside were hundreds, maybe thousands, of hand made wooden arrows.

“You do this all yourself?”

Clint answered without looking up. “Bobbi and I, yes. She found a local farm that has a flock of black geese and we buy all the feathers there.” Now he did look up, his face almost inhumanly serene. “I love arrows; this is like meditation for me.”

He stretched, his arms seeming to go on forever and then jerked a thumb to a long closed cabinet to Bucky’s left. “Second shelf down in there is all cured and the right length for your arms. Go take’em all out and ... get to know them.”

Bucky snorted. “Do I need to give them names?”

“If you like. Just don’t tell me. Names are between the archer and the bow.” There was not one trace of his usual jovial sarcasm or teasing in his voice or his eyes. “You gotta touch, hold them all. The wood’s gotta be right in your hand, the grain, the density, or it’s no good. These aren’t guns, Barnes. You can’t mass produce one of these.”

Feeling weirdly ashamed, Bucky slunk over to the cabinet and opened it up. The shelf in question had five staves of three different kinds of wood; he gently moved them all to the nearest table and separated them out. 

“That’s yew, ash and Osage orange; all from the local forest,” Clint said, head down over a new arrow. 

“What’s yours made of?” Bucky asked softly.

“English yew that Bobbi had MI-13 send over, years back, for my birthday. The local stuff isn’t the same but it’s pretty close. Go on and get to know them. The right one will let you know what it wants.”

Bucky picked each length up in turn, holding them flat on his palms first, as though using them to balance with. They all weighed slightly differently and within a few minutes he’d gently moved three of them to one side. They felt too light in his grip, too fragile. He’d be afraid to draw them with power. The two left were clearly different kinds of wood, different grains and structures and colors. Leaving them on the table, he let his fingers, on both hands, slid up and down the dry but supple surfaces. 

Then he picked them up one after the other and rested the bottom of each on an angle against the foot of the table. He braced it there with his foot, grabbed the top and tried to bend them. 

And then he knew which one was his bow —- the first one had bent easily under his grip and sprung back with something he could only call eagerness, like the living thing it had been. He again gently moved the other one to join its companions and looked up with his bow in his hand.

In his mind the Soldier murmured _Yastreb_ and now he knew its name, too. _Hawk_

Clint was watching, and had probably been watching the whole time, his chin resting in his hand and his elbow on the arrow rack. That serene, wholly serious expression was still on his face and Bucky was uncomfortably aware this was Clint Barton with the fewest layers between himself and the world. 

When their eyes met, the archer nodded in approval. “Good choice. Osage Orange wood.” He glanced away then glanced back. “I’m sorry about all ... that in the kitchen. All this. We made a bad choice and that lead to a shitty plan and it was wrong. Nat and I talked about it after you left and she’ll give Bobbi the riot act when she gets back. We were wrong and if that means we wrecked the whole thing from the start than so be it. Matters more that you don’t feel manipulated or preyed on, right?”

Bucky set his bow down to one side and leaned on the table with both hands. “If I accept that apology — I’m not saying I do, but if — what’s the next step? For you, for all of us?”

Clint sat up and blinked at him a moment. “Hadn’t really thought that was possible anymore...dunno? Other than we all talk it out like adults but like ... not here, where we’re all trapped together. Bad place to have that kind of conversation, when no one feels like they can leave. But like, no matter what its got no effect on us as teammates and friends, you know? No more than it ever did between Bobbi and Nat or me’n’Nat.”

Bucky nodded, knowing there was relief on his face. “Okay. I’m not making any promises but ... okay.”

Clint’s lips quirked a little. “Tomorrow we’ll get the targets out and shoot a bit, I wanna see where you draw. It’ll change the grip and stuff. I’ll start that here but we’ll have to finish it at the Tower. I won’t rush it.”

He uncoiled himself from his stool and came over to Bucky to gather up the four unchosen staves. Bucky heard him subvocalize a few words as he touched them, barely audible ‘thank you’s and reassurances of worth. Something about that, about Clint Barton comforting the discarded bow wood, caused his chest to tighten and without thinking he brought his hands over Clint’s holding them still.

The other man, a little shorter than Bucky, looked up and as he did Bucky leaned over the table and kissed him on the mouth. 

It was nearly chaste, both their lips almost closed but it went on for long enough Bucky felt them both move into it a little before they broke apart. Clint’s skin was rougher than Natasha’s and he tasted different, more astringent? Bucky didn’t really know how to describe it, the taste of Clint Barton’s mouth, but it didn’t taste bad, or wrong. 

And it had felt good. Warm. Inviting. 

Clint stepped back a moment but more in surprise than anything else. His eyes were fever bright and his face was flushed. Bucky thought he probably had something similar going on.

“Man you didn’t have to—“ Clint started to say.

Bucky cut him off. “I wanted to; since no one was forcing me. I hope that was okay?”

“Yuh...yeah. Yeah, it was good.” He grinned now, and that was the Clint Bucky was used to, the sharp wit under the fool’s smile. “But let’s leave it there, for now? Not cause I want to! Just, it seems...I don’t wanna be part of you thinking anyone wants to mess with your head any more and sex is kinda a mindfuck right off the bat.”

Bucky nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’m headed upstairs, you?”

“Just gotta cover some stuff up that hates dust, be right up.” Clint fumbled the unused staves once, picking them up.

Bucky let his own grin out in the corridor and heard a very Russian snort in the back of his mind as he took the stairs three at a time. 

It was dusk outside and the living area was empty. He couldn’t hear anyone moving upstairs but outside ... soft grunts and bare foot taps on wood.

And so it was that when Clint joined him on the upper deck with two bottles of cold beer they could settle in to watch, in the mellow fading light, as Nat and Bobbi knife sparred on the deck. 

In bikinis. 

With live blades.

Nat had several cuts on her upper arms and one long scratch across her belly. Bobbi was bleeding lightly from a similar scratch up one shoulder to the side of her neck. 

They both shone with sweat, neither of them acknowledged the men at all and their faces were set, cold and serious. 

Exchange after exchange started and ended in swift, darting moves in and out, a few blindingly fast passes and then a break apart with one of them acknowledging a strike with a touch and nod. 

Natasha was still weak from her illness — their fights were generally evenly matched and Bobbi was very clearly running away with it this time. And that was with the blond fighting reverse grip, her hunting style blade held against her inner forearm. That grip was just slightly less versatile, had slightly fewer angles of attack and slightly less range than Natasha’s standard grip. 

It ended abruptly, with Natasha’s arm dropping too low on a counter and Bobbi’s blade flaring up and over in a throat cutting flash that was impossibly fast.

All four of them made a similar startled noise as the blade snapped to a kill shot undefended. 

Then Bobbi was stumbling past a staggering but unharmed Nat. The taller woman was bleeding freely from a cut on her hip just over her bikini line. Her knife was quivering point up in the wood of the deck.

Somehow, in the heartbeat before it struck, she’d dropped it out of her grip and shoved Nat away, taking that deepish cut in the process.

Clint landed next to her, having vaulted the railing. He located the first aid kit they had handy and levered Bobbi off her feet and onto her right side. 

Bucky landed next to Nat in the next second and swiftly checked her over. 

“No, I’m fine is she—“

She was interrupted by choking laughter from the Bartons. They both turned and stared. Clint was holding a pad against Bobbi’s wound, waiting for the bleeding to stop and they were both giggling wildly.

“No, no,” Bobbi was saying, “clearly it was a trap and I fell for it, you know these wily Russians!”

“It’s a damn murder plot, obviously. Can’t trust’em!” Clint returned.

In Bucky’s arms, Nat sighed. “Well, that’s just normal madness for them so she must be okay.”

“That was the one place on my body without scars Nat. We all know you planned it!” Bobbi declared, dramatically.

“You jealous hussy,” Clint deadpanned. 

Bucky closed his eyes and dropped his chin to Nat’s head. “You got me into this, Milii Moy. I blame you.”

“Don’t you be like that Bucky Barnes not when _we’re both invalids now_ ,” said Bobbi.

And with those words Natasha dramatically collapsed into Bucky’s chest, throwing her hand up against her forehead. “I declare, I feel so faint.” 

Bucky closed his eyes a moment, sighing. “This last day makes me miss Siberia. At least it was peaceful there.” He opened them to look down at Natasha, her green eyes glowing up at him like embers. She quirked her mouth in response, bitter and sweet.

Clint was standing up with Bobbi draped against his chest, his eyes as bright as they had been down in the workshop, his mirth infectious. “Poor little birdie,” he crooned at her, a musical lilt in his voice. “Let’s get you cleaned up and ... checked out.” His croon somehow conveyed carnality at the end of the sentence.

Bobbi’s expression as he carried her past them was angelic. Bucky watched them all the way up the stairs and into the living room, then looked back down at at Nat, still slyly smiling at him.

“Milii Moi those are a pair of _umnyye ptitsy_ you found for yourself.”

“Clever birds for us, I hope, James.” She sighed and pushed away from him. They stood a tiny bit apart and looked at each other. Darkness was falling and her face would have been hard to see if he was not a super soldier. “I am sorry we tried to be clever with you. It was my idea, if it matters. I thought perhaps you would be more ... upset ... about the Clint part.”

“I have no idea how I feel about that part other than ... confused. And I spend so much of my life these days confused I don’t like having you inflict that on me too.”

She raised her hand to his chest, just letting it lie there, fingers rubbing against the thin fabric of his shirt. “I know. That was very wrong of me, wrong of us. Disrespectful of you. It matters a lot to us—to all of us—and we let that end lead us to a bad means. I am sorry.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking up at the sky a moment. “Clint said something like that in the workshop. Right before I kissed him.” He looked back at her right away and saw the smile bloom on her mouth.

“And?” 

“It was ... odd. Not what I expected. But ... nice.” He caught her fingers in his flesh hand and squeezed. “But that’s not what matters. You can’t _do_ this crap to me, Nat. I have to trust you won’t do it again. You understand?”

“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes at him and pulled her hand free. “And yet we all know we will do bad things to each other. We will lie and we will fail to speak and we will hurt one another.”

“I don’t care it you hurt me, Milii Moy. I don’t care much if you lie to me; doing what we do sometimes we have to lie. I care if you try to _change_ me without my consent. No one, not even you, gets to do that. No one. Not ever again. I will leave before I allow that, you hear me?”

She winced, just a squeeze of her eyes. “Yes,” she said, softly. “I had been without you so long, James, and in a place of some safety I ... I just made myself think outside the worst of it all.”

Bucky felt a clench in his stomach, not a physical pain. He gently placed his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close again. “That makes me glad, milii moy. So glad, that you could forget even a little. I don’t ever want to forget anything ever again but I hope to find a different place of safety, soon. With you and maybe ... maybe with those clever birds of yours. Of ours, I guess. Not like I could pry either of them out of Steve’s life or yours at this point.”

Natasha sighed against his chest, her own arms snaking around his torso to squeeze tightly. 

They stood like that till it was full dark, the heat of his body keeping them both warm. 

Inside they split up, Natasha going upstairs to shower and change and Bucky to watch some TV in the living room. He was impressed by the soundproofing in the main bedroom cause there was no chance in hell the Bartons were not engaging in some kind of athletic sexual activity in there. He could smell it in their sweat as soon as Clint had picked her up outside. 

Natasha had made it back downstairs and was rooting around in the cupboards when the other two emerged, both grinning smugly. Clint peeled off into the kitchen and Bobbi claimed one of the recliners in the living room and began pestering Bucky to change the channel — he was watching a true crime documentary, which he found soothing — to a movie.

Bobbi won control of the remote; Bucky didn’t resist hard, honestly, just enough for her to earn it. Natasha dumped a pile of bowls and several bags of chips on the table. In the kitchen they heard the fridge open.

“Red, white, beer or water?” Clint called.

They snacked in the living room in front of the TV, enjoying silly comedies and dodging the occasional chip thrown like a ninja star.

Clint cleaned up and then rousted Bobbi out of her recliner to take it over and settled her into his lap. She sighed and melted into him, then muted the TV a moment.

“Good news and ... I’m not sure news. We’re all below the clear level of the virus, as of today’s blood tests. So, we’re going to be able to go back to the Tower soon. In fact, we have to. Nothing urgent but stuff is waiting for us. Heck, they need me to help interrogate the scientists from the lab we just broke up. They won’t be able to tell who is and isn’t lying about the science.”

A heavy sigh went around the room.

“One more day,” Clint said firmly. “Targets out tomorrow.”

“Agreed,” Natasha said. “I need the rest.”

“Oh, I already expressed that to Steve, via email, and he agreed but like ... in that quiet ‘I know what you’re doing here’ way of his. So, one more day,” Bobbi said. 

Bucky leaned back on the couch. “I’m not going to say I don’t want to get back to the Tower but ... this has been nice. Feeling safe. Other than being trapped with all of you and your stupid plans.”

The other three all went quiet, guilt on their faces. 

Bobbi turned to him full on. “I know Clint already said his piece, don’t know what he said, obviously but — we fucked up. We got so into our own clever bullshit we all did some serious emotional violence to you. Thank you for not murdering us all in the face, which we deserved.”

Bucky stared at her open mouthed, then looked at Natasha next to him. “She really has no filter, does she?”

“Like the blunt object she is,” Natasha murmured, leaning into him. 

“You all,” Bobbi waved vaguely around, nearly popping Clint in the nose, “you are not an op. You are not my marks or my prey or my enemies. I’m not spending energy on trying to ... obfuscate around all of you. I’m sorry we did what we did and I hope you forgive us and also that some day we can sit down and talk about this whole thing like adults and I still love you all very much and I don’t ever wanna lose you.” 

And then she started to snuffle into Clint’s shirt.

Clint kissed the top of her head and smiled over it at Bucky and Nat. “This is ‘honestly overemotional Bobbi’ at her foul mouthed toddler finest, enjoy.”

“Fuck you,” was the muffled response from his chest. 

“Yes, you did that already, it was great,” Clint said sweetly.

Seconds later he was facedown on the hardwood floor with Bobbi on his back applying a full guillotine choke.

Seconds after that Bobbi was kicking air, suspended from the Winter Soldier’s grip on her neck and waist. 

“No archer murder till he makes my bow, Mockingbird,” he said sternly, then placed her firmly on the ground. She rabbit punched him in the gut but by then they were all laughing. 

That was how the rest of the night went, roughhousing, laughter and the fissures amongst them beginning to seal over. 

*****

The next morning Nat was up before Bucky — in fact he was the last person up as it turned out. When he wandered downstairs he found Natasha drinking coffee in the living room and reading. He could see Bobbi way the end of the dock, setting up strange looking archery target; two more of the targets were set up against the rock wall that bordered the barbecue area outside. He went out to take a look at them.

They were just square bullseye targets in frames from the front. But when he got close he could see the target faces were back by several inches of a grey foam. Touching it, he realized it was the same high velocity ballistic nano-foam the shooting range at the Tower used — it could absorb bullets relatively undamaged for Stark to recycle. And now he thought of it of course it would absorb arrows the same, and with as little damage. 

Bobbi came up the stairs as he was examining the target, greeting him with a soft good morning. She’d been her usual raucous, racy self last night so he was a little taken aback at the sense of subdued control draped over her this morning.

“Where’s Cli—“ he started to ask.

Her hand came up in a ‘stop’ gesture, freezing him, then she pointed up. Discretely he glanced at the roof line and saw Clint perched on the edge of the top floor, looking out over the lake. His body was statue still, as though he was an odd kind of gargoyle left there to guard the house.

“He sees better from a distance,” Bobbi whispered to him, then gestured at the table on the far end of the balcony, just in front of the stairs down. “The blue bow is mine, any of the other you can use. I’m just going to change and then I’ll be out here shooting, if you want to join.”

He did so when she came back out, in a skin tight rashguard and long pants, he had picked and strung a sturdy plain recurve that was set for right hand draw and gathered some arrows in a hip quiver. Natasha migrated outside to the table on the upper deck, watching. 

Bobbi set herself up for the lake side target and nodded at him. He took his spot next to her. The targets were close, only about thirty feet away, and there was little wind to speak of but when you were working basic form the distance matter very little. 

They settled into a gentle rhythm, her shots, then his in succession. Quivers empty, they advanced on the targets. 

Both had managed good groupings, all bullseyes, but he saw Bobbi’s posture stiffen as she approached her target — clearly displeased. His own he was indifferent too; he knew he could do better but had also done worse and it had been a long time since he shot.

For a moment, pulling the arrows out the ballistic gel that absorbed them so beautifully the edges of his vision went black and white and he felt a finger of ice brush the back of his neck. 

_Siberian tundra and ominous stands of evergreens. He was barefoot, clad in rags, his body shaking with cold, a roughly crafted bow in his hands. An endurance test, they had told him, to see how strong he really was but he knew the truth — he’d mumbled that name, the one they didn’t want him to remember as he was waking up this time and so now he was punished for it. His hands came up as the deer inched out of the covering bushes and the arrow flew—_

He came back to the real world _(Was is real though? Was he here, in the sunshine, safe or was this another part of his punishments, to be ripped away when he was finally ready to accept it?)_ to note that Bobbi was quietly standing next to him, her arrows gathered, but pretending to study her target till he regained some composure. 

Bucky shivered and turned to walk back to his spot, with her a step behind him. 

They repeated that, including his small dissociative fits, three more times. The last time he looked up to catch Natasha’s eye, to reassure her, and so saw the moment Clint Barton came down off the roof.

No. Not Clint. 

The man who landed on that deck thirty plus feet down, light and soundless as cottonwood down, was Hawkeye.

Silently he paced first to the targets, letting his fingers skim over the surfaces, then over to where they were stationed. He walked behind them, nodding as he went past.

Bobbi, once he and Bucky where safely out of the path, raised her bow and shot. Two arrows in, Hawkeye appeared next to her. When she was looking at him he touched the inside of his right forearm and then his left elbow. 

She nodded and raised the bow , pulling it to her full draw and stopping. As Bucky watched, she adjusted those two points and shot again.

Hawkeye shook his head and touched his elbow again; Bobbi grimaced and nodded and took another shot, after another adjustment. 

As that arrow left the bow, they both smiled. It hit perfect center target. 

Bucky swallowed a little, impressed and moved by that silent, intensely meaningful exchange. That was a teacher/student bond to the cellular level. On the upper deck he heard Nastasha sigh softly. 

Hawkeye walked behind them again and Bucky knew he was watching _him_ now. He paused before drawing his own bow, willing himself not to fumble or hesitate. 

His first few shots were fine, same as all the others. Motion in his peripheral vision and he turned to see Hawkeye studying him. He nodded.

“Pull your elbow closer to your body, on your draw. You’re so strong you’re actually changing the plane of the arrow without realizing it.” 

Next arrow Bucky did as he was told and he could feel the improvement in his control and aim before it even left the bow.

Three more exchanges, fewer and fewer words each time though they weren’t at the silent gestures level yet, and Bucky’s form improved each time. Eventually Clint move out of his vision again and he and Bobbi finished the round.

The sun had moved in the sky when Bucky came back out if the intense sniper focus he’d fallen into. His fingers and shoulder throbbed.

“—nough,” Hawkeye was saying. “Good work today but if you shoot tired you’ll go back to the old, bad form.”

Bucky wasn’t tired at all and turned to say that — then stopped at the look on Bobbi’s face, her sharp head shake. Ah, of course. Hawkeye wanted to shoot and by himself. 

Bucky unstrung his bow, checked it and the string, organized his arrows then joined Nat on the upper deck.

Down below what had been practice morphed into something else. Hawkeye was gently uncasing his long bow, checking each centimeter of it with eyes and fingers, his touch as gentle as a lover. On the other side of the table Bobbi was setting arrows one of the larger hip quivers, placing them with precise gestures. As they watched she filled five of them total, setting them on the end of the table in the same orientation.

When she was done, she looked at Hawkeye for approval, got it, then stepped back and away. Hawkeye set the first of them on his hip and turned not towards the nearby targets but the one on the far end of the dock that Bobbi had been setting earlier. It was several hundred feet away, in the path of cross winds from the lake surface, and down about fifteen feet in elevation. 

Almost before Bucky saw him move Hawkeye had sent an arrow to the dead center of that target — his super soldier eyes found it quivering there. It was joined by another and another and another, a forest of black feather sprouting at a rapid fire speed. In moments, that first hip quiver was empty and Hawkeye was setting a new one. Bobbi refilled and replaced it. 

The Avenging Archer went through ten of those quivers at speed, not mechanically, but with a nearly ethereal grace and assurance. He had walked the arrows out from the center of the target in what was clearly a pattern, spiraling out and back in again.

As the last one from that flight landed, Hawkeye dropped his arms and turned around to scoop a bottle of water from behind him. It was the first time Bucky had seen his face since he started shooting.

If he had ever thought he was looking at the real Clint Barton, the real Hawkeye, before he knew now he was sorely mistaken. As nakedly honest as the man had been with him in moments past this ... entity with the length of wood in his hands was pared down to the essentials of his own spirit. If he ever experienced a tenth of the serenity in this man’s eyes he would know he was finally free of what Hydra did to him.

Bobbi, once Hawkeye had stopped shooting, had sprinted to the far target and retrieved the arrows into a large container. Coming back she placed it under the table, nodded at Hawkeye in a way that was almost a bow and moved to the upper deck to join Nat and Bucky. 

Down below another five quivers had been set up. Now Hawkeye’s mood changed and there was no rapid fire of arrows. He would string and draw, then hold still until some ineffable combination of wind and water, air and light and motion, felt right. Then an arrow would fly, and another would be taken up, and the archer would hold and wait for the universe to settle in around him, arms and body like stone and steel, unwavering.

It was indescribably beautiful, unspeakably perfect. 

Mesmerized, Bucky watched him shoot like that for two quivers full, then felt a hand touch his arm. He looked over to see Nat going back inside and Bobbi nodding at him to do the same. He nearly shook her off — he wanted to keep watching! — but then he saw the tears in her eyes, the streaks down her face.

He followed her in, watching her struggle to compose herself. She staggered a little as she went towards the master bedroom, voice quavering. “Thanks. He likes...he likes to be alone with the last few. It’s—“

“You don’t have to explain, _malen’kaya ptitsa_ ,” he said, gently. “That is not archery happening out there. That is communion with the gods. Let the man pray in peace.”

Bobbi looked over her shoulder at him, smiling through tears. “It’s an abomination that he must spend himself on anything else. He shouldn’t be using that ... it should not be for war. Not ever. Damn this world for perverting his gifts like that.” Her voice grew a little lighter for a moment. “But don’t let him hear you call me little bird, either.”

“Doesn’t count in Russian,” Natasha said, firmly. “Go, wash up. Have a nap. We will watch over him, if he needs us.”

Bobbi pursed her lips and nodded, then disappeared behind her door. 

Bucky pulled Natasha into a gentle embrace, feeling the strong emotions coursing through her dancer’s muscles. “If I had ever wondered what you saw in him, milii moy...”

“I saw it in you first, James,” she sighed into his chest. “You have to learn to believe that. You have to learn to believe us, in us, in this.”

“I’m trying my best,” he said. “Now, let me make you lunch, like a good boy.” 

*****

Hours later found the four of them sitting on the end of the pier in bathing suits, feet dangling in the water. Clint, Bobbi, Bucky and Natasha in a line. Clint and Bobbi had both been uncharacteristically subdued after he came in from shooting and they had insisted on cleaning up the targets alone, together. 

After that, Clint had taken Bucky around the grounds, checking the various security and infrastructure systems, making sure everything was prepared for their departure in the morning. It served to familiarize Bucky with everything as well and he’d been pleasantly surprised, again, by the thorough lethalness of their organization. 

Bobbi and Nat had packed up the house, closed off rooms and gathered their luggage, now stacked in the atrium.

Here, nearing the end of the day, they had all congregated on the dock to sit in the warm sun and breath in the clean fresh air.

In time, Bucky had found his arms coming up to rest across the shoulders of the others, Natasha tucked lightly into his armpit and the fingers of his bionic arm against Clint’s neck. 

Bobbi sighed lightly. “I know we’d all get bored out of our skulls if we just stayed — and like eventually someone would show up and burn the forest down to get to us — but this was really nice. Playing house.”

“If you make a playing doctor joke, Clint, I will bludgeon you,” Natasha said instantly. 

“Wasn’t gonna,” Clint lied, petulantly.

“It _was_ nice,” Bucky said. Then he braced his foot against the pylon of the pier and hurled all three of them into the water. 

Natasha got some serious distance, given she was the only weight on that arm, but Clint and Bobbi wound up tumbling together in a trashing mess not far from the starting point. When they had all surfaced Bucky leaned forward. 

“But if any of you ever try that manipulation crap with me again you will regret it forever, understood?”

The initial response was a chorus of curses but after a moment and some water treading agreement was given from all their mouths. 

Suddenly Bobbi disappeared under the water and surfaced long enough to wail “My top! Where is my top?” 

Bucky looked. It was a reflex. 

And in that moment, he lost track of Clint.

Fingers like steel wrapped around his ankle, Clint surging up from underwater, and Bucky was in the air and then submerged. He surfaced to six hands fighting to duck him under again and it was on.

The water fight became an ‘each Avenger for themselves’ brawl, with everyone dunking and being dunked by everyone else. At one point Bobbi (who had not lost her top) was pulled backwards by her ankles by both Clint and Bucky at the same time as she tried to ascend onto the pier and together then sent her flying half way to the pontoon barge. 

The high five they shared cost them as Natasha used the moment to leap from the water like a koi and body slam them both under the surface. They came up coughing and sputtering.

Something in Bucky’s mind snapped. He nearly heard it. The world whited out around him and when he came back to himself he was clutching the edge of the pier, the other three were staring at him in concern and he was breathing so hard his stomach hurt.

He heard his own voice gasping a phrase over and over.

“This is real. This is real. This is real.”

He looked up at the other three, wildly. “This is...this is real. I’m really here, this is the real world. You’re all real.”

“James, we are. We’ve been trying to tell you that for the last year and a half,” Natasha said, softly, swimming in to rest her hand on his arm. “We are assuredly real.”

“I know but—“ he leaned his head against the wood and struggled to control his breath. After a moment he found he could speak calmly. “This has to be real. There is no one in Hydra with the imagination to come up with anything this ... absurdly ... fun.”

“Great, we must be real cause we’re such total clowns,” Clint said in disgust. 

“Honestly, I figured your shitty sense of humor alone was enough to tip the scales,” Bobbi answered.

Bucky opened his eyes to find all three of them had swum close and were watching him with wary but open expressions. 

“Thank you,” he said, softly, “for being real.”

“You’re welcome,” they all said at the same time.

And though he knew it was coming he didn’t resist as they all pounced on him and thrust him under the water.

He turned and arrowed down the bottom of the lake, letting his hand close on the silt and mud, then looked up. He was heavy enough that if he didn’t fight it he could stay down there easily. 

Through the blur of the water he could make out all three of them diving down towards him, their strong beautiful bodies cutting the water easily and despite everything love on each of their faces.

Bucky Barnes, alive in the world, grinned like a shark and rose up to meet them, these people he loved.

Nothing was solved, nothing was resolved but here and now ...

This was real. It was enough.


	7. Between a Rock (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The foursome are in a bad place, being chased by bad people, and Steve has just ... had it with some people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to go back to a bit of action!

“Clint, can you tell where we are?” Natasha hissed out of the shadows, emerging in a flurry of black and blood. Her face and the hand she reached up to brush her hair with were covered in the charcoal smears that blood turned into in the moonlight. 

“Fucked. Is that a place? Cause that’s where we are, fucked” Clint replied, planting his last explosive arrow head on this end of the improvised tripwire. “Come’on I don’t wanna be in this canyon mouth if they actually follow us this far.”

Natasha made a noise of pure enraged frustration and lead the way back up the narrow track to the top of the dry stream bed. There, hunched on a rock, a shirtless Bucky Barnes was being examined by Bobbi. 

“Bobbi, Buck what was your count?” Clint said when they were in range. As soon as they’d been driven from the path all four of the ex black ops had started counting steps.

Without looking up, they both answered, Bobbi first.

“657”

“653”

“Nat?”

“664”

“I got 650.” He looked up at the angle of the moon, checked his watch. “BRB.” He sprinted up into the darkened area that lead even further away from the canyon mouth, those Barton eyes of his picking a safe path out of the black. 

“Nat, come here. Confirm exit and entry.” Bobbi was staring intently at Bucky’s right shoulder, one hand on her tac goggles. One lens was shattered but it was still working. 

“Four. Seven.” 

“Fuck.”

“What does tha—“

 _”Stop fucking moving Buck.”_ Bobbi snarled. “Wait till Clint is back and don’t fucking move. Especially your right arm.”

Bucky flicked his eyes to Natasha and she saw the worry in them. She gently stroked his hair out of his face and nodded. 

The bullet holes in his chest and back — the source of her bloodstains — had stopped bleeding but she hated the way they looked. He’d taken the brunt of the fire from the ambush, after the Army Special Forces squad supposedly backing them up had inexplicably disappeared. His super kevlar and bionic arm had protected him but in that withering hail of gunfire, arms up to protect his head, bullets had gotten through. 

Bobbi was on her knees, sorting through the tiny pile of equipment they’d gotten out with. She was cursing in a steady stream and Natasha started as she recognized the nearly brutal language of Barbara, the most rage filled of the personalities in Mockingbird’s head. If Barbara was that close to the surface, things were bad. Bucky didn’t quite hear it, she could tell. He didn’t know the stick fighter that well yet. 

Clint barreled back, grabbed a stick, sketched quickly in the dirt. “Average the numbers, accounting for terrain, angle of the moon on the horizon — we were here, they drove us here, we’re somewhere in this quadrant.” 

Bobbi nodded. “Then we need to head that way,” she indicated the top right side of what he’d drawn. “There’s infrastructure that way. We need a surgical suite ASAP. And preferably a surgeon but...”

“Mockingbird,” Bucky snapped. “Explain.”

She looked at each of them and spread her hands, closing her eyes a moment. Her face settled and grew still, cold. Bucky had been right to invoke her Avenger name. It was Mockingbird who faced them all now, calm and clear.

“Three bullets with no exits. Two are in your chest plate. They’ll hurt like hell but not impede you otherwise. Third though? That one is lodged against your right brachial artery.”

Nat gasped; Clint hissed a curse. Third fastest bleed out in the human body and even a super solider can’t survive without blood. 

“It keeps nicking the side of the vessel and then you bleed into the muscle and interstitial spaces in your arm and upper thoracic cavity. I’m going to bind your arm down and that will slow it but nothing can stop it but getting it out. Right now, your healing factor is keeping up with repairs but it’ll get slower and slower and eventually stop.”

“What do we do?” Natasha asked, her voice rigidly controlled.

“Like I said, find a surgery suite. Until then any high calorie food we can get into him will power the healing. Buy time.” 

She dove back down to the equipment pile and came up with a single dirty strip of pressure bandage and a coil of paracord.

“Hold still and keep your arm where it is,” She said to Bucky. Natasha took the other side, braced against his bionic arm, as Clint rapidly inventoried their weapons. 

The women bound Bucky’s arm straight down against his side, Bobbi checking with her tac goggles that each wrap of bandage and chord wasn’t shifting the bullet in his armpit. 

They had just finished when the air around them...changed. Shockwave. Clint turned and grabbed both the woman, pulling them all into a huddle around Bucky with their heads down, touching.

An instant later the ‘whomp’ of detonation from the canyon mouth hit them, then a blast of dirt laden air swept up their gulley and the canyon proper. As the noise died, they heard men screaming.

Clint released Natasha, kept Bobbi’s arm. “You can’t. You can’t go help. They will kill you. And then Buck’ll die. And then we will. You can’t go back and help.”

She shook him off, her eyes haunted but managing a pained quirk of her mouth. “I was about to say that to you. May Steven Rogers have mercy on our souls.”

*****

Tony, Sam, Sharon and Bruce all agreed later that what they were seeing was a once in a lifetime experience, to be treasured; in the moment, as they trailed through the corridors of the Pentagon behind Captain America watching him flick guards and generals alike out of his path like motes of dust, they were collectively horrified. 

At their destination, a nondescript meeting room on the top floor, two armed men stood in front of the double doors. As Cap turned the corner they both stiffened and identical looks of purest existential terror settled onto their faces. Cap didn’t slow his stride: calm, even and relentless. 

“Gentlemen, we’re going into that room. It can be past you or over you, pick one.” For a moment, he smiled, Sharon could see his expression in the mirrored glass to one side of the doors. He looked like the most beautiful shark in the ocean. “Trust me, when I’m done in there, no one’s going to care about what you did.”

They looked at each other, just a side ways glance ...

... and stepped away from the doors. 

Steve kicked them open so hard their handles embedded themselves into the drywall on either side.

The meeting of old white men inside was caught utterly off guard. Steve ignored them all to stalk directly to the head of the table and face off against the four star general just managing to get to his feet. 

He stared at the man in silence, which spread to the rest of the table in heartbeats. The tension grew and grew and grew and Sharon was once more surprised by the artfulness of the man she was in love with. He seemed so easy and open and yet he knew to his bones how to play a room, how to control an encounter.

“Why...” he eventually breathed, with such brittle, artificial calm that it made everything worse by a factor of ten, “did you pull out my team’s backup?”

The Army man in front of him, not the official head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but the one who really had the ear of the president, sputtered. “We learned that they were on foreign territory—“

“Your staff gave us the coordinates,” Steve said softly. “It was unclaimed territory.” 

“Well, it’s not my fault the system failed—“

“It didn’t fail,” piped up Tony from the door. “Jarvis tracked the legal motion with the UN in real time, and when and where it was filed from. When they hit the ground that was no man’s land. Still was when they got ambushed. And now, suddenly, it isn’t anymore.”

“Did you,” Steve said, his voice going even softer, quieter, gentle as poison spreading through wine, “think that you could slip that kind of thing past Tony Stark? Past us?”

“It’s not my fault—“ the general tried again.

“Fault? It’s definitely not your ‘fault’, like it was a mistake. This was the plan all along.” Steve cocked his head and settled back onto his heels.

In the doorway, Sharon and Sam both dropped hands to where their weapons would have been, if they had them. Bruce backed up another step, into the corridor proper, his fingers twitching against his palms. Tony leaned forward, his breath going short with excitement. 

Steve swept his eyes, steel blue all of a sudden, like the light glinting off the barrel of a gun, down and up the table, then back to the man standing.

The four star general combat veteran flinched and knocked his hip against the table backing up two steps. 

“Who did you sell them to, general? And what did you get?”

The man’s mouth opened and shut, like a fish. “How dare you—“

Steve’s head snapped down to his level, meeting his eyes and his voice cut out like a recording had stopped. “Tell me now who we have to approach to get them back safe and sound and I won’t do what I’m going to do otherwise.”

“What? Are you threatening me?” The general managed eventually. 

“Yes,” Steve said.

“How dare you!” The man repeated again, seeming unable to think of anything else to say. 

As the words faded, Steve nodded. “I’m taking that as a no.” Then he turned and walked back out the door, gathering the rest of his team with him. The corridor was empty to the elevator. As the reached it, Steve turned and looked at the rest of them. “Go out any exit but the front. Wait for me at the north side, if you can. If you get any pushback, leave, I’ll find my way home. Tony, how fast can Jarvis get reporters headed in this direction?” 

Tony quirked his mouth. “Already on the way. Five minutes, tops.”

“Steve, what are you going to do?” Asked Sharon.

“Salt the earth,” he replied, then stepped into the elevator and was gone. 

They watched his impromptu press conference from the Starkvan; the back part was two bench seats facing each other with space in between. He had deliberately placed himself so that the war memorial and Arlington were visible in the far distance behind him. 

He stood at a picture perfect parade rest, in his full cowl and uniform, shield held in front of him. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him, his mouth set, his face stern and calm. 

When the jostling reporters had settled, he swept his gaze out over them and nodded. When he spoke his voice was pitched perfectly for the microphones, not strident or soft.

“You forget he acted at the beginning of the war,” Bruce murmured.

Sharon and Sam shared a look. They actually had both forgotten that. 

“Yesterday, at the request of the State Department and Army command, four Avengers — in a joint operation with the Army — went into a contested area off the Caspian Sea to effect the rescue of a number of civilian activists and their families trapped there due to the sudden territorial dispute between three nations in that area. They were being backed up by a squad of Army Special Forces. Or so we were advised.” Steve took a deep breath and very calmly dropped a verbal thermonuclear device. “We were lied to. Deliberately. Maliciously. By Army command at a minimum.”

He let a rising wave of confused exclamations from the reporters crest and fail.

He continued. “Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Black Widow and the Winter Soldier were dropped into an ambush by an unknown force at the same time the Army unit backing them up simply turned and walked away. There was no legitimate mission; the civilians had already been apprehended by this same unknown force. The last communication we received from them made those facts very clear. We have since lost all contact with them; we are uncertain of their medical conditions or indeed if they are even still alive.” He stopped and smiled, just a sharp quirk of his mouth. “Given who they are I am confident they are alive, and fighting, and on the run. But I’m also confident that they are likely injured, have no way to communicate with the outside world and limited supplies. I consider them to be in mortal and immediate danger. I called you all here today because two things need to be clear: my team did not invade a sovereign nation — at the time our assistance was requested and my team landed on site, the civilian compound was in unclaimed territory. That suddenly and provably changed while they were on the ground. Secondly, someone in Army command sold them out to be captured or killed.”

In the van, Sharon gulped, Sam hissed and Bruce moaned. Tony was silent, intent on the screen. And smiling like a proud father. 

A storm of questions blistered the air, reporters leaping like koi to get his attention. He waved them all quiet.

“We will release via our media liaison website all the documentation we have proving this as soon as possible. I will tell you in person, though, that I know this to be true; in fact, that was why I was here, to confront the person I believed and feel is now confirmed to be responsible.” He looked straight out over the group and for a moment it felt like he was looking directly at the team in the van.

“Go, Cap, go,” Tony mumbled, jittering side to side a moment. 

“As of this moment, at minimum until this incident has been fully investigated by an impartial third party and the people responsible for my team being placed in mortal danger are brought to justice, I regretfully advise that the Avengers will be withdrawing their support from any Army joint operations currently active and divesting ourselves entirely from any such operations in the future. I cannot put my people into the field when we cannot trust the people standing beside them. Please monitor our website for any further information.” Steve nodded firmly, then turned to leave.

“What about War Machine?” Bawled one of the reporters, causing him to turn back. 

“Colonel Rhodes is my friend. He is not under my command. I trust he will fully understand our official stance on this. Also, he’s Air Force, not Army. Any issues the Air Force might have is between him and his commanding officers; that does not alter our friendship or my support of him in any way.” He nodded towards the building. “I have nothing more to say but the group of generals trying to sneak out of the building behind you might have something to add. Good day.”

He strode off, headed north. The pack of reporters turned, baying for blood, on the men coming down the front steps. 

“Jarvis, quick, get us over to him,” Tony hissed and the AI started the van remotely, spinning the wheel and headed to intercept Steve. He swung into the van without it having to stop, once Sam opened the door for him, then settled into a rear facing seat, looking over at all of them. He pulled his cowl down and as always, for a moment, looked absurdly young and vulnerable. 

“Salt the earth is an understatement,” Sharon said, moving to sit next to him. 

“Well,” he said, tucking his arm over her shoulder. “I was really angry. Still am.” He looked over at Tony. “Any word?”

“Nope. But satellites show the mouth of a canyon near the ambush site collapsed a few hours ago — like someone set off explosives, right?”

“They’re alive,” Bruce added, “and lost in those mountains.”

Steve leaned back, pulling his seatbelt on. “I hope none of them are hurt.”

The silence that settled across the group was grim.

Faint hope, indeed. 

*****

They had sacrificed speed for concealment and now Bobbi was convinced that had been the wrong decision. The gully and ravines they’d used had driven them further and further into unknown territory; out past the limits of any maps they’d all memorized. She kept a running scan of Bucky’s arm and side on one corner of her HUD — the goggles were in passive mode and she had battery power for days there. Blood was starting to pool dangerously, which put extra pressure on the sides of the vessel; she was going to have to risk draining it soon.

And yet as slow as they were going Bucky was still going too fast, each step jarring his wound just a little. She wanted to wrap him in a blanket, or find a cave to stick him in. Except, in this area of the world it was likely he or Widow was a primary target of this ambush and the odds were they’d take a bullet to the head rather than be taken hostage.

The ravine they were in abruptly opened onto a flat swath of dirt and rocks over looking a drop of several hundred feet ... and no other exit.

In front, Clint cursed in a tired rage, then coughed. Natasha passed him one of the last two water bottled and he took a small swig. 

That was another thing, they needed water and food. She didn’t have her supply lined coat with her, which she swore would never happen again no matter how much she trusted her circumstances. They’d pooled their ration bars, getting Bucky two and a quarter of his own. 

That burst of calories had bought them a few more hours before his healing factor would start to cascade fail — but not if they kept to this snails pace. And now they needed to retrace.

“Huddle,” Natasha said, drawing in the Bartons. 

Bucky ignored her a moment, scanning the horizon, the pre-dawn light making the shapes of the low mountains and rolling hills stand out starkly against the sky. When he turned it was with a robotic crispness that they all recognized.

“Winter?” Natasha murmured in Russian (they never called him ‘Soldat’; that was Hydra’s word for him). “You see something?”

The man who was/was not Bucky Barnes nodded, speaking in Russian as well. “I know this ... I ... we trained here, I think. Before your time, Widow. With some of the Wolf Spider program. Have we a topo map?” The Soldier did not call her Milli Moy.

“Yes and no,” Bobbi said, coughing dryly herself but waving off a water bottle. “We’d have to turn on a phone and they’d track it. So we’d have a topo map for like ... couple minutes? Then a missile.”

“Can your goggles do a download of the local area fast enough you could run it as a non-interactive sub routine?” Natasha asked, her voice flat and cold. She was thinking hard but also found watching Bucky overtaken by Winter incredibly painful. 

They were all going to pay for this little debacle in trauma when they were home. 

Bobbi cocked her head and nodded, hand on her unbroken lens frame. “Yeah, I’ll purge non essential memory right now.”

“What’er we doing, red?” Clint asked, fingers snapping against his own thighs. 

Natasha outlined her plan, which got reluctant nods from each of them. Winter held out a hand when she was done, listen to me, his gesture said.

“I...I remember a place that has a surgery suite. I think it’s ... not near here but not impossibly far either. If we had a map I can show ... him ... you all ... how to get there.”

They all looked at Bobbi, her mobile features frozen in intense calculations. She looked up and nodded. “Yes. If it’s inside of a specific perimeter even an outdated Hydra medical bay will be better and safer than anything local. But we need supplies on the way; we cannot trust anything edible in a Hydra base — it was standard procedure to spoil or denature anything left behind.”

Nods all around and then they were ready. Clint used a length of paracord to tie a flat rock to the back of his Starkphone. Natasha and Bucky/Winter started their slow pace back up the ravine to the last fork. 

The Bartons advanced to the edge of the cliff, Bobbi’s fingers clenched on the side controls of her googles. Clint waited for her to indicate _ready_ and then powered his phone on. The instant it came up he activated the ‘map’ app and she touched the googles to it. Data transfer started and Bobbi kept her eyes down, watching the ‘area’ and ‘topographical details’ bars rising. Clint’s head was on a swivel, watching for—

“Engine flare,” he said softly, watching a tiny winking light in the distance jink and sway, growing larger by the heartbeat. “5 4 3 2–“

Bobbi jerked her goggles back, thumbing a side control as she did, and simultaneously turning to sprint for the mouth of the ravine. 

Calmly, almost lazily, Clint Barton’s arm drifted backwards. He posed for a millisecond, fingers tapping on the screen.

His weight shifted up from his big toe and his arm snapped forward like a pitcher, hurling the still active phone (its feather light high tech body weighted by the rock) out into the open air above the canyon. As it left his grip he was running too, catching up with Bobbi and following her into the ravine.

The sound of the guided missile blowing up the phone in mid air behind them echoed loud enough to ring their ears. Now they had to all get far enough away from here to be safe from the unknown troops that were about to swarm the area.

*****

New York, Avengers Tower

Sam had just landed the quinjet on the roof pad when a series of alarms went off in rapid staccato.

Tony jerked awake, sputtering, his hands already moving on the nearest keyboard. 

“What is it?” Snapped Steve, whipping around from where he’d been staring out the window with an angry and melancholy air.

“Clint’s phone just came back on line, getting a satellite over it.” Tony said, abstracted. He could absorb a fearsome amount of visual information at high speed, trained by years of watching his helmet HUDs. He didn’t even bother to try and slow down the feed for the rest of the team, now watching over his shoulders. It was all being recorded anyway. 

Steve could just make out what looked like a barren stretched of dry, steeply foothilled terrain near where the ambush had taken place, then the screen whited out in an explosion. 

The alarms went silent. Tony sat back, fingers dancing across keys as he spoke, letting the images play and replay in two different angles and several speeds. 

“Okay, Clint’s phone came back on line and so did Bobbi’s goggles. There was a high speed data dump — all mapping info — from the phone to the goggles, which then shut off again. I guess they saw the missile sent by whatever group of assholes is after them lock on the phone. Clint hucks it into the air and you can just see two figures disappearing into that ravine. Then the missile hits the phone.”

“Sir, “ Jarvis said quietly, “there was one text message sent just before the phone was destroyed.”

On one screen two letters appeared:

4 a

Steve felt his chest muscles unclench just a little.

“Four, alive.”


End file.
